


True North

by strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie



Series: North Star [2]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Episode VII, Star Wars Episode VIII, Star Wars Original Trilogy, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Alcoholics Anonymous, Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Angst and Fluff and Smut, Angst and Hurt/Comfort, Angst with a Happy Ending, Ben Solo Needs A Hug, Ben Solo Needs AA, Ben loves Rey, Chattanooga, Devoted Reylo, F/M, Gimme All the Good Stuff, Hollywood, Implied/Referenced Drug Use, Jane Eyre - Freeform, Kylo Ren Has Issues, Long-Distance Relationship, Modern AU, North Shore, Notting Hill, One True Pairing, POV Ben Solo, Past Alcohol Abuse/Alcoholism, Reylo - Freeform, Romantic Soulmates, Soulmates, True Love, Young Ben Solo, ben solo's POV, rey loves ben
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-06-30
Packaged: 2019-04-20 05:38:28
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 11
Words: 29,574
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14254167
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie/pseuds/strawberrycupcake_huckleberrypie
Summary: Ben knew who he was well enough. He’s fucking Leia and Han’s son, he’s Anakin’s grandkid, he’s Kylo Ren, he’s Hollywood, he’s NYC, he’s only ever going to be that whether he wants it or not, they’ve assured that since he was conceived and he will never, ever, ever escape it but where he belongs?It’s anyone’s guess.Could be California, could be New York, could be the fucking moon for all Ben knows.And here’s this girl, this woman, who has lived here in this small town her whole life, and all of a sudden all he knows is he’s desperate for her to look up at him again.****"North Shore" Ben's point-of-view





	1. Lost

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Ben's point of view, companion to Rey's "The North Shore."  
> For context, best read after Chapter 4 "Rarity". 
> 
> Chapter 5 North Shore drops tomorrow.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> gift of the gorgeous mood board by the amazing rileybabe   
> <3 thank you, friend

 

 

True North 

 

Chapter 1

Lost

 

_“Getting lost is not fatal._

_Almost every time, it will make your world.”_

\- Julian Smith

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

She was bent at the waist, a gentle hand on Ben’s shoulder, looking down at him kindly, patiently waiting for him to answer.

As usual, Ben could not find the words to answer, though he knew what he would say, if he could.

 

“ _Yes. I am,_ ” he would tell her if he could, hoping this stranger could find his mom, find his safety, find his courage for him.

Instead, he nodded, tears sliding down his cheeks, past his strong nose and puffy, pink lips quivering with worry, past his smooth, little boy chin onto his Smurfs t-shirt below.

 

She tilted her head at him tenderly, curling a sympathetic arm around his frame, barely more than half her height and said, “c’mon sweetie, let’s go find your mom,” as if it were just that easy, as if that wasn’t the crux of the issue, the bane of Ben’s existence, the core goal of his day, everyday to simply _find_ his mom.

 

The saleswoman walked Ben to the front of the store, nearest the manager’s desk, depositing him onto a hard, rounded plastic chair to wait, smiling brightly to offer him optimistic comfort, before turning to page the mother of the displaced boy over Neiman Marcus’ speaker system.

 

It wasn’t the first time Ben had lost his mother and by age 8, he already knew that before he had a chance to embrace his mother, who probably had noticed his absence by now, he would first have to listen to the saleswoman exclaim and become overwrought, falling all over herself realizing Leia Organa was this lost, sad, little boy’s mother, maybe even getting an autograph before his mother would kneel and scoop him into her arms, pulling his tear-stained face close to rest his head on her shoulder, and scold him for being like his damn father, always wandering.

 

He didn’t mean to wander, honest he didn’t, he just couldn’t for the life of him figure out where he fit.

 

*******

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

The counselor asked, a whistle from around her neck, above her red Lifeguard one-piece and blue nylon shorts with white piping up the side.

Ben was supposed to be nearly a quarter mile away by now probably, his troop somewhere in the woods without him, trying to locate some stupid woodpecker and before he knew it, Ben was not only off the trail and out of earshot of his troop leader, he had meandered onto the grounds of a completely different camp, apparently one which had a pool nearby.

 

_“Yes. I am,”_ he wanted to reply but, his eyes were struggling to avoid the teenager’s visibly hardening nipples under her stretched swimsuit and his pre-pubescent voice box may break on the words if he tried to speak.

Instead, he just murmured, “uh huh,” hoping that was sufficient, and apparently, it was because she turned on her heel and marched up the hill without waiting for Ben, shouting “c’mon then, hurry up,” heading for the Main Cabin of the campgrounds.

 

Pre-teen and gangly, Ben waited at a picnic table outside the Rec Hall in the sunshine, out of place in his camo camping gear, compass and bird watching book swinging from carabiners on his cargo shorts’ belt loops, dressed in stark contrast to the swimsuited and casual campers of this place.

 

He was picked up not long after by an unhappy Capt. Martin in a golf cart, briskly stuffed into the rear with the wind tumbling past him as the cart bumped over the path-free grass between campgrounds on Lake Inverness, at least relieved to be sitting a different direction from the director so he couldn’t hear the lecture as they drove along.

 

He had meant to stay close, hadn’t meant to get lost, didn’t mean to be separated. Couldn’t they all see that?

 

*******

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

This guy was hardened, tattoos on the face normally represent a certain personality, a definite set of life choices and he wore his so proudly, Ben was intimidated although they had to have both been 16, no way this kid was older than that, look at his patchy stubble and sense of something to prove. This kid was trouble but, he had the shit Ben was looking for and that made him an ally, facial tattoos and questionable life choices notwithstanding.

 

_“Yes. I am,”_ Ben thought, although this shithead definitely wasn’t someone Ben could trust with that truth bomb.

Instead, he sucked in a breath quietly and shook his long hair out of his eyes, silently cursing Jamie for this shitty suggestion of a source.

 

“No. I’m looking for some molly,” Ben said, sure to access his full height for this, happy to see he had at least a half dozen inches on this punk, even if he felt his heart race and his knees shaking.

“What the fuck’s a rich boy like you comin’ to this part of town for?” the dealer asked, trading ecstasy for cash with Ben, handing him a small plastic bag of pills, wonder and skepticism in his eyes and tone.

 

“The fuck do you care?” Ben responded, bravado instead of truth, pocketing the pills and climbing back into his BMW. He hoped the speed with which he reentered his car and the heavy thudding of his heart were both unnoticed by the kid he had made the deal with, and he made a promise to himself to avoid this fucker at all costs in the future, no matter who said he had good shit.

 

Lost was one thing. Deathwish was another.

 

*******

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

The drill sergeant screams it, half an inch from Ben’s face, a rhetorical question, meant to scare the bejeezus out of Ben in this moment and it works, it fucking works like a charm and not for the first time he wants to cry himself to sleep that night in his bunk on Parris Island, where boot camp is underway, where he nightly hears other new recruits nearby sniffle themselves to sleep.

 

_“Yes. I am,”_ he knows, knows it as well as he knows his own name, rank and serial number, one of the only things he knows goddamn well, _yes_ , he most certainly _is_ lost and always has been.

Instead, he stands straight as an arrow, unflinching, head shaved and ears poking out too far, eyes focused, left undereye twitching, practicing silence and submission in a way both entirely foreign and wholly appealing to him as a new Marine.

 

“Drop and give me a hundred,” the sergeant pronounces, moving away from Ben, squelching through the thick mud on his way to torment another Private, leaving Ben to kneel and plank, coming nose-to-nose with South Carolinian, dark brown mud outside the barracks, with each and every one of the one hundred pushups.

 

This was good. This was therapeutic.

This was healthy and difficult and brutal and fucking _genuine_ and after a lifetime of show business family life, dressing up and pretending, smiling when you want to scream and never being able to escape being who you are, never not even for a minute allowed to forget your family, your heritage, your bloodline, it felt so good to be safely ensconced where you were perhaps the same person, but buried in a crowd, unfindable.

 

Ben knew who he was, there was no chance he could ever be anyone else, it was why slipping in and out of characters was not only easy it was preferable.

He would always have an extremely solid idea of who he was to come back to, a never-ending list of labels attached to himself, the whole fucking world knew who he was.

But, he just never knew _where_ he was.

Never felt the ground under his feet harden, never felt himself sink in anywhere and he welcomed the Marines into his life who forced him to physically stabilize himself, pummeled into the earth and those peers who had no choice but to accept him as one of their own, unimpressed for very long by his name and pseudonyms.

 

He was part of a team and it felt good but, it wouldn’t last forever, he already knew that.

This was only for a while, a couple years at most and so he already knew it wasn’t sure, wasn’t fixed, wasn’t for keeps.

 

He’d still have to find _something_ , he'd still have to get stable some day, find something enduring even if this was good practice.

His pedigree demanded his presence elsewhere at some point in the future, he knew it when he joined, he just didn’t know where, yet.

 

********

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

The housekeeper’s cart was right there, right in front of Ben and he hadn’t even seen it, nearly ran into it as he stomped in small circles around the hotel hallway, torn between wanting to chase Rey down the back steps, head her off at the hotel front entrance and explain, see her eyes mirror understanding, coax her back into his arms versus going straight back and kicking Jen out of his goddamn hotel room as fast as he possible could. He was pulling his hair at the roots, his head a swirling mess of conflict.

 

_“Yes. I am,”_ he wanted to shout at the small, round woman in the white apron who stood looking at him, confusedly, waiting to see what this man was doing, pacing the hall in obvious discomfort.

Instead, he just shook his head and gave himself permission to sit down right there, right in the hall, against the wall, knees pulled up and elbows resting, as he gulped in long pulls of air, counting to 20 at least three times, forcing himself to calm the fuck down, threatening himself to figure this out, _just get it under control, Solo._

 

She had been right there, _right there,_ he could see the spot she’d been standing from here, not ten minutes ago, glowing like a fucking cherry bomb, flushed red and sparking flames, and he was so fucking hot for her, it was like he could see the heat radiating off her and he was cold as soon as she stepped too far away. And now he was without access, he’d fucked it up so desperately, so quickly.

 

It was like he’d seen shore and he’d dived in excitedly, and he'd come up gasping for air on a totally different island.

Inhabited by his shitty, miserably selfish, cheating ex-girlfriend and not the luminescent, dazzling free-spirit he’d met and held and kissed moments before.

 

_Jesus_ , she’d tasted good.

She tasted like sunlight and sweetness, like fresh air and bright light and Saturday morning and ease.

She tasted like something brand new and pure and strong and real and fucking _vibrating_ with beauty and life.

She tasted like permanence.

Like goodness and abundance and a deep well of something Ben had never known before - _sanctuary_.

 

He’d lived his whole life in so many places, so many houses, so many cities, locations, towns, all without ever staying long enough to plant roots.

He’d never had a friend longer than a year at most, never lived with both parents at the same time longer than 4 months, and even then not since he was 9 years old, never hung onto a girl longer than 18 months, and even then it was while he was deployed so, he hadn’t had the challenge of keeping her interested since it was a long-distance relationship.

 

He was so used to fangirls, groupies, “Solo artists” they called themselves collectively, fawning over him and sending him their panties in the mail, gushing and hanging on him in his trailer, on set, in L.A. restaurants, on airplanes, anywhere they found him and yet, here was this girl, this _Rey_ , who kept her distance, wrapped her own arms around herself, never touched him, wouldn’t even sit down next to him on a couch when he offered, and all he wanted was to see how soft her wrist was.

Feel her pale skin and see the ink colored red and black over her translucent skin and blue throbbing veins beneath.

Why that was so magnetic, he had no fucking clue but, it was.

 

And then she said no, she couldn’t see him tonight and it was because she had people. She’s got roots. She knows where she belongs and it hit him like a bullet to his gut.

 

Ben knew who he was well enough. He’s fucking Leia and Han’s son, he’s Anakin’s grandkid, he’s Kylo Ren, he’s Hollywood, he’s NYC, he’s only ever going to be that whether he wants it or not, they’ve assured that since he was conceived and he will never, ever, _ever_ escape it but where he belongs?

It’s anyone’s guess.

Could be California, could be New York, could be the fucking moon for all Ben knows.

 

And here’s this girl, this _woman_ , who has lived here in this small town her whole life, with her hair tied up and her smooth, elegant neck and her sweet, little ankles peeking out above her everyday shoes, not bothering to fake being anyone but who she actually is, pulling him out a back door, a secret escape down a road only she knows, the destination a mystery to him, to share her people with him, a stranger, and she’s soft as rain and sweet as pie and her eyes look down at the concrete sidewalk and all of a sudden all he knows is he’s desperate for her to look up at him again.

 

She is not lost.

She knows the way, she knows _all_ the ways.

And Ben is not lost right now either, not with Rey’s hand in his, adorably leading him, not with her in his lap, anchoring him to the floor, not with her eyes on his, her light centering him.

 

Maybe it was selfish, hell, maybe it was a straight-up creepy, typical, dick move but, Ben wasn’t about to let this girl get away, wasn’t about to miss a chance to see whether she’d let him have some of her heart, some of her self-assuredness, some of her light tonight and for the first time in his life he was willing to just go all in and risk being uncovered, exposed, vulnerable in order to taste more deeply whatever this girl was made of, stars and sunbeams and grace.

 

He’d known she was special, known it the minute he’d crashed into her like a fucking bull in a china shop, nearly mowing her down and toppling her to the ground, reminding himself how this world isn’t really built for someone his size, always knocking things over and crushing things without meaning to.

 

He’d known it when she didn’t ask him for anything, not a photo, not a recitation, not an autograph, nothing - hadn’t even said his name.

 

He’d known it when he’d looked into her eyes, saw pity for him when he called her lucky, saw confusion, sympathy, saw humanity.

 

He’d known it when he’d glimpsed her in the crowd, a beacon, a lighthouse, dust at her feet and a halo of sun around her like a fucking backdrop, a fucking green screen.

 

He’d known it when she'd thanked him, when she'd left his trailer without saying goodbye, and it became just another rented space again, anonymous, echoing, lonely without her in it.

 

He’d known it when she walked in and waved to Phasma and Hux, those assholes, lit up like a summer noon on the beach, blinding him.

 

He’d known it when he’d heard her lifelong memories with her friends, seen it in her abandoned enjoyment, her carefree, generous love for them.

 

He’d known it and he’d let her slip away.

 

He could have _had_ some of that, just a fucking _taste_ but, no.

He’d let her get away.

Let her get hurt.

Let her light be extinguished, doused, stomped out.

He’d done that, he’d watched and just fucking let it happen.

 

Ben stood and marched to his suite, slid the key down the pad and opened it with a force that whisked his hair off his face, a great whoosh of air.

 

_“Are you lost?”_

 

He yelled, demanding of Jen when he saw her, lounging on the bed, a script on her knees, a look of bland surprise reaching her face, framed with perfect, butter-blond beach waves, a pale cream slip covering her, spaghetti straps slipping towards her elbows.

 

Ben grabbed her bags, her suitcases, her toiletries, her shoes, her clothes, everything he could fucking find that looked like her in the slightest, perfumed or manicured or designer labeled, everything he couldn’t recognize as his own and resolutely ignored her shrieks of confusion, panicked claims of unfairness, name-calling, insistent insults, pleading requests for more time, more chances, more understanding and he picked up his phone to call Phasma and Hux to come deal with this “situation” immediately _or else_.

 

He left the suite with a slam and a huff, finding solace in the bar downstairs for an hour, looking to get numb, letting the bourbon calm him down and chill him out again, hoping for anything to take the edge off the train wreck of a night, almost able to forget where he was, what had happened and what he’d lost by the time he’d climbed into the anonymous hotel bed alone upstairs later.

 

It didn’t matter where he was, anyhow.

No one was looking for him anymore and he couldn’t have told them where to find him if they had, some random room in some random little town, somewhere in the mountains in the South, alone and drunk.

It didn’t matter.

He’d lost her anyhow.

 

He was still lost.

 

******

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> thanks as always to my priceless beta, uselessenglishmajor. 
> 
>  
> 
> Comments get you into heaven.  
> Don't worry, I checked.  
> It's true. 
> 
> xo  
> \- cupcake


	2. Liquor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> captivating mood board courtesy of the generous rileybabe  
> faithfully beta'd by the beautiful uselessenglishmajor
> 
>  
> 
> Ben's Point of View.  
> For context, best read after Rey's POV companion work Chapter 7 - Remedy "The North Shore."
> 
> **********************************  
> Chapter 8 North Shore drops Thursday.  
> Chapter 3 True North drops Friday.  
> **********************************

 

 

 

 

_“Liquor is the chloroform which enables the poor man_

_to endure the painful operation_

_of living.”_

\- George Bernard Shaw

 

 

The first time Ben got drunk he was eleven.

 

It was Day Two of a lengthy bender for his dad, recently wrapped of his latest Kentucky Smith movie, and living back in the Hollywood Hills home Ben hadn’t been to in over a year, his mom having left to go shoot somewhere overseas once his father returned.

Everyone who was at his dad’s house back then called him _“Tuck,"_ a familiar way to refer to him as his box office smash alter ego, adding to Ben’s surreal experience of feeling everything about his dad, this house, this environment was completely alien to him.

 

Ben was used to Manhattan at that age, school uniforms and sidewalks, subways and taxis and, his disorientation of living in Los Angeles with his father, navigating paparazzi and oppressive sunshine, famous people and their sun-kissed kids, made him feel incredibly isolated, even if his dad’s house was endlessly teeming with a never-ending stream of people.

 

When a man his dad referred to as Chuck handed him an amber beer bottle and said “here, kid,” after Ben hadn’t seen his father since the night before, left to assume his dad was somewhere in the house, he supposed, Ben shrugged and took a sip.

It tasted like bread and sour water but, the man laughed heartily and didn’t move away till Ben nodded and took a deeper swig.

 

Ben climbed onto a pool raft and laid on his back, letting his feet hang off the end above the sparkling, chlorinated water and stared up at the robin’s egg blue sky.

He took his time, sipping tiny bits of the liquid down, letting it burn the concern for his father away, letting it lull him in the soft rocking of the pool water, a cradle of sky blue surrounding him above and beneath, serenity for his confused youth.

He stared up at the sky and imagined his mother in Europe somewhere, his school friends back at the Academy in New York, and he listened to the radio, the tune whistling into his subconscious from the back porch where it sang to him.

 

The sky was so bright, he could still see the blue when he closed his eyes so he left them shut and drifted on the raft, right into sleep.

 

 **_“Up,”_ ** he heard his father shout at him, shaking the big toe of his right foot side-to-side where he lay on the float in the pool, the sky above him suddenly inky black, rolling thunderheads of clouds swiftly gathering, fat raindrops falling one at a time into the pool around him.

Ben jumped off the pool raft, his head swimming and his stomach roiling and he barely climbed out of the water before he threw up in the bushes at the edge of the patio.

 

The next morning, he cleaned up his own sick on the ground by the pool, everyone having evaporated from the party and he tugged his shoes on to walk to his new school.

 

*******

 

Every time he drank beer after that first time, Ben got better at it.

 

He learned what tasted best and how fast to swallow it down and how much he could handle before he puked.

Over the years of middle and high school he moved on from beer and discovered vodka, tequila, whiskey, gin and he learned how to keep his eyes open, how to drive without running over any more mailboxes, how to show up drunk or hungover at school and get away with it, how to move through life with breath mints in his pocket and a fake sobriety in his eyes.

 

The second time he got drunk he’d fallen asleep in the master bedroom of his girlfriend’s mom’s house, knocked out on the brandy he’d found downstairs during a year-end blowout as junior year ended, the party still raging on downstairs, his head splitting and his cheek red and smarting where she had slapped him when she’d seen him kissing another girl that night. Which he would never be able to actually recall.

 

He’d drunk and drunk and drunk that night, filling up the empty swimming pool in his mind until it resembled a deep well he could lower himself into, inch by inch, surrounded by an assortment of sweetly aromatic liquids, the red plastic cup his bucket to be lowered by, the drinks he savored sloshing around him gently, a fragrant home for his adolescent wanderings.

He gazed up from the bottom of the liquor-filled well and saw the patch of dark grey evening sky above, the size of a photograph and closed his eyes, feeling the drink rock him to sleep.

 

 **_“Up,”_ ** she’d squealed at him, throwing his shoes at him, not even bothering to hand him his jeans and he’d bolted out of the bed bleary-eyed, confused, heart racing and still drunk, stumbling down the stairs as fast as he could, clutching his Nikes to his chest, heart drilling a mile a minute.

 

His girlfriend glared at him in the halls of Orange Hills High after that, never speaking to him again and he’d never gotten his jeans back.

 

*******

 

Life in the military offered plenty of opportunities to drink, plenty of support in favor of getting shitfaced, plenty of comrades in arms to accompany him and Ben had lots of experience drinking the night away, doing his best to excuse his impressive appetite for alcohol by dismissing it with his physical size, suggesting he needed more than the average bear to get wasted, after all, he was a big boy and big boys require big drinks.

 

He knew he was more than a casual, social drinker by then, he’d known it for years but, he’d gotten clean and stopped popping pills and smoking weed when he quit being a whiney ass bitch so, this more manly pursuit of liquor was excusable as far as he was concerned. It didn’t matter if only Ben knew how much he was actually drinking.

 

He has one mother already and she doesn’t give a shit so who cares?

 

There was no chance he could keep drinking like this and hide it but, somehow every time he started drinking, every time he imagined that swimming pool again, it morphed into that deep well and he could lower himself inside, deeper and deeper, the liquor a mellow, placid bed of nectar he could float in, the sky above the well’s mossy, slippery walls a distant one, no bigger than a quarter now, the color imperceptible from this distance where Ben floated in the elixir of inebriation, unable to climb out even if he’d tried, moments of numbness during pain, submersion for his turbulent adulthood.

 

 **_“Up,”_ ** his drill sergeant hollered at him from the sidelines, screaming at Ben to hoist himself over the climbing wall with only a single rope to help leverage himself over it. He repeated the instruction over and over until Ben dragged himself, all 6 feet and 3 inches of length over the wooden barrier and dropped down the other side, his head a screaming banshee of pain, his hangover demanding attention and sacrifice, his brain in literal pain from his bender last night.

 

There was a reckoning coming for him, and Ben knew it that moment, a time when he would have to sort this shit out.

 

*******

 

“…There’s only you, Ben. There’s _only_ you and I wish I could be what you need but, I know I can’t be enough, I just know it,” Rey is crying, he’s listening to the words coming out of her mouth and seeing her tears on her face on his phone but he’s so fucking far away he can’t get her to stop crying, can’t get her to stop talking, can’t get her to stop saying what she’s saying.  

 

“Rey, _stop_ it, please, stop it, _goddamn_ it, stop saying that, for Christ’s sake, _stop_ ,” he’s imploring, he’s begging, he’s repeating himself, “you _are_ , you _do_.”

 

He just needs her to listen.

He just needs her to realize who she is to him but, he’s never actually told her, _has_ he, so it’s his own damn fault if he loses her again and he knows it but, he’s not sure he’d ever be able to forgive himself if the only beautiful thing, the only true thing in his world just ceased to belong with him anymore.

 

“I have to go,” she repeats.

 

“Please, baby, _please_ , just let me call you tomorrow. Just go to sleep and tomorrow is a new day. Ok? Everything’s ok. We’re ok. Ok? _Promise_ me, Rey, promise me you know tomorrow is a new day and we’ll figure this out,” he begs her.

He flat-out _begs_ her.

She can’t mean this, she can’t leave him without ever having had the chance to hold her in his arms again, look at her face in real life and not through this fucking screen, never had the chance to tell her he’s fucking in love with her.

 

“Bye,” she says, and his heart is coming apart at the seams, his brain is hitting the brakes, his lungs are fluttering like it’s he’s in fifth gear, batting around suggestions for how to make this all just _wait, stop, don’t._

 

“ _Rey_ …” he says but, she’s gone.

 

_Again._

_Shit_ , goddamn it, _fuck_ , how did he manage to fuck this up so royally _again_?!

 

It’s all a blur after that.

There was Gun and the phone calls and the restless, listless night of insomnia, the dawn and the anxiety and the exhaustion convincing Ben to have a drink - have a few - have a couple more drinks until it’s evening and she hasn’t picked up, hasn’t answered, hasn’t reached back to him no matter how many times he’s implored her since last night.

 

There is precious little he even remembers after that, just the deep well he’s lowered himself into, the walls slick with black slime, impossible to scale at this depth, the sky above him only a pinprick of light, the liquor a cascade of waves around him, echoing and cold and nauseating, a prison for his anguished, heartbroken self.

 

 **_“Up,”_ ** he hears the officer shout, unlocking the cell door of the L.A. County Jail where he’s been locked up the last few hours, his wrinkled Armani suit and insanely unkempt hair a dead giveaway of how smashed he’d gotten.

 

 **_“You’re free to go,”_ ** they tell him at the jail as they hand him back his belongings, as Hux yanks his elbow to lead him to the waiting car out back to avoid press, as he tries to walk a straight line.

 

Ben lays in bed, his head bathed in the alcohol still burning off, his crumpled tux a stiff cocoon of regret around him and he hears the words clarify as the liquor dissipates.

 

 **_“Up,”_ ** his father.

 **_“Up,”_ ** his high school girlfriend.

 **_“Up,”_ ** his drill sergeant.

 **_“Up,”_ ** Jen beside him at the Oscars two months before they broke up, her words hissed into his ear before she stood to receive her award, stiffly kissing Ben’s lips for the camera.

 **_“Up,”_ ** his first director insisting he climbs the set to appear higher than the building, using a harness to stay relatively safe.

 **_“Up,”_ ** his mother as she woke him for school, her mousy brown hair falling over her shoulders as she bent over him in the morning light, a heart locket swinging from her neck.

_Up, up, up._

 

 **_“You’re free to go,”_ **  the officer’s words ring in his ears and Ben sits up in bed.

 

He knows where to go.

For the first time in his life, Ben Solo knows where to go and be and fit.

He’s free to go.

 

 **_Up,_ ** he thinks, as he buys a plane ticket.

 **_Up,_ ** he thinks, as the plane ascends.

 **_Up,_ ** he thinks, looking at the blue sky and cotton clouds surrounding the plane, out every window and from every angle around him, no longer drowning in booze at the bottom of a well.

 

He is heading **_up._ **

Up and out.

The plane he’s seated on may be flying east, in a few hours time it’ll land in Tennessee and he’ll fall on his face if need be, beg her in person to keep him, to just please let him hold her, try to make it all stay together but he has never been more sure of truth for himself, Ben is getting **_up_ ** and out and _north_ towards the blue patch he’s gazed at from down in the well’s waters for so long.

 

**_Up._ **

**_Up_ ** and _out_ of the liquor-filled well, the sweet smell of death and theft lingering, the fresh breeze of hope above, he ties every scene, every piece together for himself - the single rope from the climbing wall from boot camp, the safety harness from the movie set, the forgotten blue jeans, the pool raft, his mother’s swinging necklace, he makes himself a makeshift ladder, a lifeline, a way out of the abyss he’s fallen down and he starts pulling.

 

 **_Up_ ** above, the pinprick of light expands and there is blue sky again, hope and direction the color of sapphires up there, hand over hand, one handhold at a time, he’s ascending from a chasm of his own making.

 

 **_Up_** , the message sent and shouted and spoken to him through his whole life and Ben has finally decided to listen, to go that way instead of climbing down into the void, his whole life spent digging down, sinking south when all along, what he’d needed was to go **_up_** , to head north.

 

**_Up._ **

 

Finally, he can figure out which way is **_up_**.

He’s free and he’s found it and he’s heading there now.

To Rey.

To his true north.

 

*********


	3. Love

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by the darling rileybabe  
> beta'd by the faithful uselessenglishmajor
> 
>  
> 
> Monday 4/23 North Shore chapter 9  
> Tuesday 4/24 True North chapter 4
> 
>  
> 
> xoxo

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“Maybe that’s what love meant,_

_both people thinking_

_they were the lucky one.”_

\- Meera Syal

  
  


“Oh, I _know_ he’s cheating. I can fucking _tell_ he’s sleeping with her, he doesn’t have to say a word, _trust me_ ,” she says. “I _know_.”

His mother tells Ami this information resolutely, her words laced with revulsion, her face turned away from Ben, watching the California hillside from the maze of interstate she’s navigating while talking on her cell, a twisted smile of sick self-assurance on her face as she drives.

 

“Because I’ve _done_ this before!” Leia shouts into the phone. “Because I know the _signs_! Because I _know_ him! Because Han Solo may be many, many things but a _shining scholar,_  he is _not_ ,” she insists.

 

Ben is accustomed to his parents fighting, used to them parting and yelling and occasionally storming out of the house or slamming doors or throwing things till they smash but, he’s also used to coming around a corner and seeing them kissing in the foyer at his mom’s condo, or seeing his father pull his mom onto his lap with a smirk as she passes his legs while they’re out on the boat, or the look that passes between them when they slow dance, nose-to-nose.

He knows all his parents’ signs, all their signals and glances and glares, but this is different this time, he knows it, and it feels like the earth under his feet has disappeared, like he’s in a centrifuge, held to the wall by gravity and inertia, no land under his feet as he is swung around so fast he can’t catch his breath.

 

“This is _it_ , Amilyn, I swear to you, this. Is. It. The last straw,” his mother promises into the cell phone, the grey roads a twisting python under her car, the lanes a confusing spaghetti of directions outside. “No more, I am telling you, I am so _tired_ of his bullshit. I _mean_ it this time. For real. I’m _done_. I’m exhausted,” she says with a mighty exhale, a swear, a release.

 

 _What does that mean?_ Ben wonders.

_Aren’t they a family? How can you be just…done?_

_Don’t they love each other?_ he ponders, recalling images, sorting his nine years of memories.

 

 _Maybe that’s what love is,_ he thinks.

 

 _Maybe love is_ **_exhaustion_** _._

 

*******

 

“Come _on,_ Ben! ” she fusses at him, tugging the long sleeve of his henley shirt as she pulls him through the small crowd towards the giant, wooden rollercoaster. “You’ll like it, I _promise_ ,” she insists, though Ben is unconvinced, nervous, too overcome with the nearness of his crush to argue and too unfamiliar with rollercoasters to calm down.

 

He pays the fee for them both, sliding into the seat beside Samantha, his palms breaking out in a clammy sweat as his arm brushes hers, her ponytail swinging into his eyes as she reaches behind to secure her safety belt around her teenaged body.

She’s so much smaller than Ben, so cute, so perky it’s no wonder she’s been starring on her own Nickelodeon TV show for a year already, _“Gia, Hope So!”_ looking exactly like the dream version of teenage royalty every girl wants to become and every boy wants to date and here Ben sat, beside Samantha Romano, on a rollercoaster overlooking the Pacific in San Diego and all he wanted to do was throw up three times and cry.

 

 _“Ah!”_ she’s already screaming with delight and shrieking her head off as they ascend the first hill, her arm threaded through Ben’s in what he is sure must be an attempt at additional safety as opposed to actual desire for contact with him, while he is busy crushing his own lips against themselves, gulping hard, white-knuckling the bar over his lap, refusing to make a peep.

 

The train of cars crests the hill and Ben can see the shimmering ocean beyond them, the treetops in the park beneath, the backs of the heads of the passengers in front of them and he feels himself let out a solitary whoop of sheer panic that morphs into joy as the coaster speeds them barreling down the track, over and up and through, repeating and changing and surprising and thrilling him, flushing his face with wind and wonder.

 

 _“See?”_ she needles him when it’s ended, the car slowing to a stop, her fingers digging into his side as she wags her face in front of his, superiority and playfulness shining her face to gleaming, her smile glowing and excited. “Wasn’t that absolutely exhilarating?”

  


_She was right,_ Ben thinks, smiling back at her, nausea subsiding.

_That was super fun, actually. More than that really, it was totally awesome._

_And look how cute she is,_ he thinks, taking it all in, realizing she is still connected to him physically, her arm still looped through his as they exit the ride.

 

 _Maybe that’s what love is,_ he thinks.

 

 _Maybe love is_ **_exhilaration_** _._

 

********

 

“Come on, I gotcha,” he says as he pulls Ben’s hand hard, nearly moving the shoulder from its socket, dragging him up the wall until Ben’s boots gain purchase and he tosses his own body over the wooden barrier.

“Come on, I gotcha,” Ben hears himself parrot as he turns to extend an arm over the wood to the trainee behind him, his hand being offered now to the next man, his arms pulling the man over the wall he’s just cleared, his words an exchanged encouragement.

 

This is a test of the Crucible, a gauntlet, a necessary feat to accomplish when they make a Marine out of you, Ben knows it and he welcomes it, and he relishes the chance to push himself far, far beyond the limits of what he previously thought his body capable of.

He’s never worked so hard, never been so depleted, never shocked himself or felt such pride or beamed so hard in his life, even if the melody of his days is the screams of his drill sergeants and the people who surrounded him were strangers to him weeks ago.

This feels like a team to Ben, a group, a unit, a tribe, and he basks in the security of attachment.

 

 _“MOVE IT MOVE IT, SUCK IT THE FUCK UP! YOU’RE NOT IN KANSAS ANYMORE, DOROTHY, THIS SHIT IS REAL AND I’M THE FUCKING WICKED WITCH!”_ he hears the sergeant yell, whether to himself or someone else, maybe a foot from him as Ben lumbers towards the next obstacle, a sideways glance at a fellow recruit offering him a slight, knowing smile, a flash of brotherhood, a glimpse of friendship before the next set of hands helps him over an obstacle and he turns to embrace and assist the guy behind him again, always receiving and turning to give help in that order, a system, a rhythm, a pact.

“I BETTER SEE SOME GODDAMN EFFORT, YOU SORRY SONS OF BITCHES, OR YOU’RE GOING TO DO GODDAMN PUSHUPS TILL YOU PUSH THE GODDAMN EARTH OFF IT’S FUCKING AXIS AND SEND US INTO THE GODDAMN SUN AND KILL US ALL!”

 

 _I literally could not possibly put more effort into this than I am,_ Ben thinks, weary and pushing hard, chanting “Thank you, Drill Sergeant” obediently with his peers as he slogs on.

_I am weak and fucking wasted and fulfilled. It feels good._

_I’m happy,_ Ben realizes, startled, upside down, pulling himself along a ropes course, his shaved head inches above the mud below.

 

 _Maybe that’s what love is,_ he thinks.

 

 _Maybe love is_ **_effort._ **

 

*******

 

“Here, gimme that,” she says, aviators pushed up over her bangs, holding her blonde waves so they frame her face like a yellow aura, reaching for Ben’s phone and entering her number as if she knew he wanted her to, as if he’d asked her.

“Now, text me,” she instructed with a sly smile, waiting for Ben to immediately comply, apparently, eyelashes waving at him from around aquamarine eyes, a button nose and plump red lips beneath, all suntanned and diamond-scattered and smiling actress goddess of her.

 

Phasma had set up this lunch date with her for Ben, “Jennifer Allison wants you to contact her,” she’d told him without looking up from whomever she was emailing from her phone, never skipping a beat, her tasks as publicist for him never slowing. “Her people called us and said she’s into you,” she added, sounding bored, making Ben think how batshit crazy this was, how fucking insane it was to have go-betweens set up a date.

All he’d done was comply, get in the car, show up, and now she was entering her phone number in his phone and looking at him expectantly. Ben reached down and sent a text to her seeing her phone and face both light up victoriously and she sent back a kissing face emoji, followed by a wink in real life across the small table when he glanced at her again, her mouth seductively encircling the olive from her martini, sending him an intentional message with her eyes.

 

When his lunch arrived, she picked up her fork and stabbed at his pasta, telling him between bites of his food that his looked better than hers and maybe they should get used to sharing, and was there anything he could think of he might want of hers?

Ben was obviously intrigued, flattered, turned on and it was only ten more minutes before he got the check. He’d never seen a woman help herself to anything so flagrantly before - to his phone, his food, his body. It was surprising and beguiling.

 

 _Do I mind this?_ he wondered, as Jen dove her hand into his pocket, pulling out his keys and climbing behind the wheel of his car.

_She’s beautiful, that’s for sure. Maybe this is just how things work now._

_She sure knows what she wants,_ he mused, thinking how entitled she acted.

 

 _Maybe that’s what love is,_ he thinks.

 

 _Maybe love is_ **_entitlement._ **

 

*******

 

“You just stay the course, man. I’m telling you, just hold the line, alright?” he was encouraging, his voice tender but firm, encouraging Ben to hang tight, hang in there, hang steady.

“She’ll come around, you’ll see. I can tell, buddy. I was there tonight, she wasn’t into it. If you’ve been talking to her that long, you gotta know by now, Rey is a quality woman and she wouldn’t yank your dick,” Gun told him, comforting Ben, suggesting he needn’t despair, even if Rey had behaved as if it were over between them.

 

It all happened so fast, deteriorated in his hands so quickly, crumbling like sunbaked earth till Ben was left holding his dark-screened phone in his suddenly deafeningly quiet bedroom in California, a rising tide of panic sweeping into his chest like the Pacific had gained momentum and he was stuck in the face of a tsunami alone.

 

He had no way to access her, he didn’t know who to ask or how to move or where to turn, he just kept calling her phone over and over, cursing himself, his shitty attitude that hurt her, his ridiculous claims and demands on her that pushed her away, his idiocy not to have locked this all up with her already, his inability to reach her when finally, _finally_ Gun picked up Rey’s phone and answered, spoke to him, making Ben break and consider shedding tears, his relief he wasn’t alone in the world sudden and vivid.

 

“Just give it till tomorrow, man,” Gun told him, his voice warm like honey in tea, his southern drawl extending each word like a pat on the back. “S’gonna be alright brother, I know it is. Trust me. It’s gonna be alright,” he assured Ben over and over until Ben was calm and his plan was secure and he could consider disconnecting without having a panic attack.

He offered Ben what he had, a shoulder to lean on, someone to share a burden, an empathetic brotherhood and Ben was so thankful in a moment when he’d needed it as never before, he had a friend.

 

 _I’m not sure what I would have done without this,_ Ben thought.

_I think it’s gonna be okay. I think he’s right._

_He showed me such kindness and empathy,_ Ben realized, turning his thoughts from self-preservation and despair, towards appreciation.

 

 _Maybe that’s what love is,_ he thought.

 

 _Maybe love is_ **_empathy_** _._

 

*******

 

“Are you okay?” she prods gently, her hand skimming his shoulder.

Ben leans his head back to rest on the back of the couch, his hands wiping the thighs of his jeans and with a deep exhale, sitting up he says, “can we just…can you come here? Please?” and opens his arms to Rey.

 

She does it, she climbs into his lap, across him, her side pulled to his chest and wraps her arm around the back of his shoulders.

He drops his head to rest against her, on her shoulder and tightens his arms around her as they sit, and he wonders if he’ll fall asleep that way as she runs her fingers through the hair falling against his neck from under his baseball cap.

He’s so still, only his chest rising and falling, soaking up her goodness, letting it stabilize him, letting it sedate and soothe him in a way no one’s touch ever has before.

 

 **_This is exhaustion_** _,_ he thinks.

 

“I don’t want to hurt you,” he says softly, kissing her mouth, her chin, her ears, her cheeks.

 

“Ben,” he hears her say, his body sheltering hers, his mouth on her skin, his heart flooded with adoration for this woman, this angel, this salvation, “please. I have been waiting for so long. I need you. Please. _Hurt me_ ,” she whispers urgently.

 

He pulls back from her and studies her eyes, knowing he can’t afford to fuck up again, he won’t, he _will not_ fuck up again.

She’s looking up at him radiant, sure, always certain, always planted and the only thing Ben knows, the only thing fixed in his universe is Rey, his Rey, his truest fixed point, his star, his beautiful girl, and he trusts.

 

He pushes her knees aside with his thighs and stills himself above her, moving to align himself with her as he takes her as deeply as he can and he holds her gaze, watching her gasp loudly, watching her eyes lose focus and her head tip backward, watching her breasts heave and lift, watching her drop her chin and refocus into his eyes and smile up at him with a woman’s wicked warmth of victory before moving deeply inside her and ravaging her mouth with his.

 

 **_This is exhilaration_** _,_ he thinks.

 

Overwhelmed and entranced by her, he watches her beautiful face, his own personal heaven, and learns what it is to see her come undone, how she looks an inch below him soaring, tender and stunning in rapture, the way he envisioned seeing her once before, and he pulls her close as he quakes, his head plunging to her neck, his lips falling to her throat in desperation to taste her, and he moves, he yearns, he reaches and pulls and propels his body into hers, claiming and offering and embedding them into one another until he’s gasping and breathless and they are both sated, his job completed.

 

That’s where he stays as sleep claims him, his head on her chest, his legs twined with hers, his arms around her, here in her bed where he’s found a comfort more available, more priceless, more restorative than any he’s ever known his whole life.

 

 **_This is effort_** _,_ he thinks.  

 

He reached up and gently pulled at her hair tie, watching the bun fall, slowly running his fingers through her hair, _fucking messing it up_ , doing as he had imagined, Rey watching his eyes as he worked.

“You fucked my hair up,” she told him, seated on the bed beside him, his shirt on her body, his hands in her hair.

 

“I have literally done that to you in my dreams,” Ben says, grateful beyond words the universe has given him the greatest do-over of his life, living a fantasy he thought lost to him.

 

“What else have you done to me in your dreams?” she asks.

 

“I’ve seen you in my clothes like this,” he tells her, touching the collar of his shirt around her throat, moving his hands beneath it to trace her curves, “and you’ve let me taste your sweet cunt while you’re wearing them.”

 

“Anything else?” she breathes, letting his hands run over her skin, his masculine pride spiking to find her wet as he spreads her legs wider around himself.

 

“I’ll show you,” he murmurs, rolling her by the hips up above him, her hair falling around them like a curtain, as he brings her head down to meet him, his lips catching her in a kiss.

 

 **_This is entitlement_** _,_ he thinks.

 

“Some women, they want to go to bed with Kylo Ren and they wake up disappointed to find Ben Solo,” he tells her, vulnerable, honest, quiet.

 

“Why would anyone want Kylo Ren when they could have you?” she asks, always certain, always generous, always loving and precious and good, always more than he deserves.

 

He studies her face, and she waits, letting him caress her face with his eyes.

He hopes she can feel his love for her in his gaze, his amazement.

 

“I know who you are,” she says slowly, intentionally. “I see you. Ben, _you_ are who I want.”

 

The lowest moment of his life, the most shamed he’s ever been and she chooses him.

She's proud of him.

 

It’s profoundly shocking.

 

 **_This is empathy,_ ** he thinks.

  


“Well, for what it’s worth,” Poe says the next day over dinner, “I think you did the right thing coming and seeing our Reyrey here.”

“You seem to like her an awful lot,” he said, popping a chip in his mouth from the basket in the center of the table.

 

“I do, I do,” Ben said, looking at Poe and then turning to Rey adding, “I love her.”

 

He’d seen his parents’ type of love, never known his father to utter the words and he’d decided at a young age that if he ever knew it - really, _truly_ meant it - he’d say it as fast as humanly possible, make sure whoever she was, _wherever_ she was that she would _know_ he loved her.

 

He’d _say_ it.

Now, he knows, and he has no problem saying so.

 

The universe has left him all these clues, this breadcrumb trail all his life, all he’s done is follow it to its natural conclusion.

This is an equation and he’s figured out the answer.

No need to pretend, no need to stall, the answer will never be different.

Ben loves Rey with all his heart and he wants to give her that love every way he’s able.

 

He’s a man of action, so he wants to exhaust himself into her, use his arms, his thighs, his back, his cock to wear himself out, weary himself, spend every last drop of energy he can spare to show her he loves her to **_exhaustion_**.

 

He’s a man, not a boy, so he wants to please her, wants to take her for the ride of her life, get her higher than she’s ever been, soar with her, enrapture her, leave his seed and his kisses and his mark over and on top of and throughout her, claim her and bring her to heights of bliss unheard of in complete **_exhilaration_**.

 

He’s an athlete, a runner, a lifter, so he wants to push hard, be worthy of her, prove himself, show her he has what it takes for as long as she’ll let him, physically and mentally and spiritually and in all other ways belonging to her and earning her and striving for her in the greatest **_effort_**.

 

He’s a man, red-blooded, ravenous, hungry and needy, and he’s an only child, a survivor of his parents’ divorce, without siblings, without cousins, without a home and he wants her to know she can have him, take him, possess him, while he wants the same from her, treasuring her and adoring her and taking from one another what they need freely, in **_entitlement_**.

 

He’s tender for her, she’s his heartbeat and his living, breathing light and he wants to cleave to her, to split himself open and graft himself into her, to mesh their lives together so he feels her highs and lows, her distresses and her happinesses, be her world and her protector and show her his willing **_empathy_**.

 

Ben knows what love is.

It’s his Rey.

He loves her.

 

He knows now.

 

**_This is what love is._ **

 

********


	4. Labor

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> as always, fantastic moodboard by my @rileybabe  
> and faithfully beta'd by my @uselessenglishmajor
> 
>  
> 
> North Shore Chapter 10 Monday, April 30  
> True North Chapter 5 Tuesday, May 1  
> ...and chapters of Fly whenever the mood hits. 
> 
> xo

 

 

 

_“We put our love_

_where we have put our labor.”_

\- Ralph Waldo Emerson

 

 

_********_

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

Ben ground his heels into the stirrups, curling his toes inside his shoes down over the footrests, the straps biting across the tops of his feet with every glide forward, and pulled his muscles tight, his core engaged, his chest up, back locked, arms flexed, quads aflame and brought his elbows towards his spine as he yanked the triangle grip back against his sternum.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He felt the tempo, the cadence, the pulse of the machine below him, racing the mechanism, racing himself, the _bend_ , the **_Pull_** , each slide on the rowing machine seat towards the front, each demanding draw back a tug on his psyche, his method for outrunning his demons still intact, his anchor dropped here while he sweated it out.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He dug his feet deeper, while mentally relaxing them further, telling his thighs to flex and do the bulk of the work, telling his knees to bend and take the brunt of the inertia, telling his back to contract and let the pain be his pleasure, each _bend_ a breather, each **_Pull_ ** a promise.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

This is when he rested, where he hid, how he coped.

The _bend_ of his knees his rosary, the **_Pull_** of his back his confessor.

 

********

 

“Ya gotta **push** the boy,” Ben overheard his father telling his mother from the next room, aware they were speaking about him.

They were always speaking about him, if they were speaking about anything at all anymore.

It wasn’t the way he hoped to be the main topic of conversation. It wasn’t the way _anyone_ would have hoped to be the main topic of conversation but, 8-year-old Ben was used to it.

 

“You’re too easy on him, Leia. He’s out of control at that school with his temper and the only way you’re going to get back in control is if you **push** him,” Han’s voice was raised. “Boy needs some manual fucking _labor_ in his life, needs to get his ass handed to him once in a while. Become a _real_ man.”

Ben couldn’t see his mother’s face but, he could picture it, he was familiar with the stance she took with his father, their separation cooling the desire they’d had for one another as lovers into an inflexible, burnished metal.

Her hands would be on her hips.

Her mouth would be set in a grim line above an upturned chin, her eyes flaring with indignation rooted in Han’s philandering through their marriage, not their shared frustration at a volatile, outburst-causing 3rd-grade son.

 

“If you were any kind of worthwhile father, you’d be here to **push** him yourself, _Han_ ,” his mother countered bitterly, the time-worn argument flowing through the usual channels, gushing through the familiar arteries, his parents’ conflicts merging at the mouth of the pain, same as always, less to do with Ben than themselves. “But, then again, you’d have to _be_ a real man first.”

 

Around the corner, down the hallway beyond the kitchen where they stood locked in standoff, Ben **_pulled_ ** the front door open and made for his bike to burn off the churning need inside himself and made no attempt to muffle the door when it slammed, content to allow it an accomplice to his rebellion.

 

 _Let them_ **push** , he thought. **Push** _me right out their lives, more like it._

 

********

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

For a kid with limbs too big for his body and a reputation he hadn’t grown into, rowing made sense and once he’d finished fighting his parents over it, his father’s housekeeper had driven him daily to practice. It was the only thing he’d ever tried out for, only team he’d ever made and Ben took it seriously, his commitment to rowing replacing his resolution to be a good son, his faithfulness to the sport taking the place of his security as his parents’ kid.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

The Engine Room they called it, the Hammer, the muscle, the mid seats on a Men’s Eight-row team where Ben launched his efforts. His oars were his siblings, the coxswain his master, the teammates his lifeboat, the boat became home. When he outgrew the sport, or rather, outgrew his love of authority, a penchant for partying outweighing loyalty to his team, Ben still found deliverance in action, exertion, in training, and when he got the chance he sat down to row, excising monsters and mumbles and slander, panting and remade and dragged away from the angst.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He learned young how to _bend_ without breaking, how to **_pull_ ** and it helped.

 

*********

 

“Forty-one hours of labor, son,” Ben listened to his mother recounting the story for the millionth time, knowing it was less about shared struggle and more about validating the guilt trip she wanted to deliver.

That’s what it was helpful for every time he heard her tell it. That’s where this story always led, so 18-year-old Ben knew where this was headed.

 

“I laid in that bed in pain for 41 hours, and those days they just barely knew what an epidural even _was_ and God knows it didn’t even help once they gave me the damn thing,” Leia went on, “and then over 2 hours they made me **push** before you even came out. Tore me from hole to hole, I swear to God, you had a huge head.”

 

Ben stared at the side of his mother’s face as she looked down at the chunky, black cell phone in her hand, texting someone an update about him here in this hospital bed beside her chair while she simultaneously lectured him about the dangers of alcohol, the sacrifices of childbirth, the pains of motherhood.

She wasn’t looking at him.

She never looked at him, not really _at_ him, though he knew all the things she felt by observing her from this perspective, watching her in profile, even on the stiff, antiseptic linen-covered gurney where his left arm ached with a lingering break, a cast awaiting. He knew her eyes, if he were to look into them would hold only fatigue.

 

As if his presence was still labor for her, still tired from the effort of **pushing** him away.

 

“I didn’t go through all that to watch you kill yourself, Benjamin,” his mother insisted, shaking her head as she worked her phone keypad furiously in her hands. “I didn’t labor all those hours and **push** through all that pain just to watch you crash a car and kill yourself, God forbid. I swear to God, I’d never forgive you if you did that.”

 

In the bed beside Leia, Ben stares up at the drop ceiling, stringing the pocked design together like constellations in his mind, visualizing a way to get up from the bed, out of this room, up past the ceiling, the roof, this hospital, this fucking _life_ , up to the sky, the stars, eternity, a way to escape the throbbing of his fractured arm, the indignation of being a patient, the shame of failing his mom.

 

 _I’m a pain to her like this broken arm is to me,_ he thought. _A pain to_ **push** _through._

 

_*********_

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

When he’s gotten to Parris Island and was stripped down, refashioned, rebuilt in a Marine’s image of manhood and grit he’d relished the moments of rowing and reaching, the _bend_ and the **_Pull_ ** his old friends, his communion cup, and he washed in absolution with it whenever he was able. Other recruits would wear out, they’d stutter, they’d huff and eye roll but Ben welcomed rowing as his savior, his privilege and he worked himself over till his back ached and his arms fell and his legs numbed with effort where he sat.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He knew how to _bend_ deep, how to **_pull_ ** hard and he was good at it.

 

*********

 

“I feel gross too, come on. You’ll be fine,” Ben heard Jen nearby, though he was still bent over, retching onto the dusty trail below, arms around his middle and hair hanging between his face and the rest of the world while he emptied his stomach, Jen’s voice bouncing off the rocks nearby as she looked elsewhere.

 

“You just have to keep going, you’ll feel better,” Jen suggested, “have some water and just **push** through it,” she insisted, close to exasperated, tired of stopping, handing him a lukewarm bottle of water, the sweet taste washing over his tongue a welcome change from the whiskey last night, “I _told_ you not to drink so much.”

 

Hands on his knees, Ben caught his breath, 28-years-old but feeling much older right now, still bent over and he looked to his left, watching Jen.

She was facing the canyon, feet still on the trail, tipping back the water bottle and staring off into the Los Angeles February below. She hadn’t gotten drunk last night, she’d been smart about it, and he shouldn’t have drunk so much, either but, that didn’t mean he wanted to be out here trekking up some godforsaken hilly trail at 6 on a Saturday either, she was just always **pushing** , always nudging, always suggesting and insisting and then apologizing when she went too far.

 

She didn’t care about him, he knew it, she just needed to show up to awards season with a boyfriend of 6 months or greater, all part of the Oscar-winner sell, and unfortunately, at the moment, that meant him.

 

“Come _on._ Are you ok yet?” she asked with a huff, turning to him, stretching out to take his hand and moving behind him, hands flat against his back, to **push** him further up the hill, his head still a swimming mess of nausea and pain, the skyline blurry against the horizon, a desert oasis. “No one wants to see a fat Kylo Ren,” she said, at least offering him a wink as she sliced him.

Only had a little while longer, just another few weeks before he could free them both from this “relationship”, this situation, this arrangement they casually, silently agreed upon, an alliance built on convenience and demand, a few more weeks and then she could find some other sucker to push around, do her bidding, some other joker whom Snoke could manipulate into staying with her, securing her statuette, being her trophy boyfriend.

 

 ** _Pull_** _it together man,_ he thought. _Almost there._

 

*******

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

You can’t always go for a run to let off steam, just to get you head right, you just can’t always find a way.  
There are places in the world it’s not feasible, it doesn’t make sense and everything got so much more complicated after the first big hit, the first Ren movie, he couldn’t even really afford to go stretch his legs without Mal anymore and Mal fucking hated running, it was no secret, he wasn’t exactly quiet about it.  
Egypt, Vietnam, even L.A., there were just some places unavailable to Ben now even if he wanted a run, even if his legs were cramping for it, this just wasn’t something he was big enough to fight anymore, even Ben.

 

_bend_

_**Pull**_  

  
Rowing was always possible though, even when running wasn't. Rowing was the best pain, the most known territory, the oldest workout pal. Rowing could fit anywhere, any time, any location, no matter the movie, no matter the threat, no matter the date, Ben was assured he could row.  Seated a foot off the floor in his trailer, his back curved over the structure, he could push his muscles and joints to their limit, give himself over to the harmony of the _bend_ , lose himself in the rhythm of the **_Pull_**.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He could get lost in the labor of it.

 

*********

 

“Hey,” Ben hears Rey crying, turning to sit at the edge of the bed, **_pulling_ ** her by the elbows towards him, between his spread knees.

He **_pulls_ ** her arms from her face and wipes her tears away with his thumbs and wraps his arms around her bottom, **_pulling_ ** her limp body closer and she continues to cry.

 

“Baby doll,” he croons at her, imploringly, “don’t. Hey, it’s ok, it’s ok,” Ben tells her as she stops heaving sobs but, stands before him, powerless to stop the tears streaming down her cheeks.

“Hey, I’m sorry...he doesn’t know what the fuck he’s talking about,” Ben says, seeing how distressed his beautiful girl is, it’s there on her face, the face he’s made so happy the last two days, tears in the eyes he’s made smile up at him, and he wants to smash Hux to pieces for making her cry.

She shakes her head and puts her hands on his shoulders, lets him **_pull_ ** her closer, put his hands on her better, and she sniffles preciously, “he really is,” she agrees, still not recovered, not herself, not comforted enough.

 

“I love you.”

 

It’s the last thing they say to one another, the last words Ben tells her as he kisses her at the door twice, once with his arms around her, **_pulling_ ** her close, squeezing her up into his chest, breathing her sweetness in, locking it away to take with him, storing it somewhere deep where it’ll be safe, and then he kisses her once with her face in his hands, a last gift, a last moment, a last breath before going under.

 

*******

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

It’s late and it’s cool so the sliders are open, the Pacific breezing over the railing into the condo as Ben ground his heels into the stirrups, curling his toes inside his shoes down over the footrests, the straps biting across the tops of his feet with every glide forward, and pulled his muscles tight, his core engaged, his chest up, back locked, arms flexed, quads aflame and brought his elbows towards his spine as he yanked the triangle grip back against his sternum.

 

The breeze fights his sweat as he works up a sheen, the _bend_ and the **_Pull_ ** disciplining him again.

 

She hadn’t been crying anymore on the phone, that was good, and Gun texted him she’d gotten home safely in his car, not fucking walking home alone around Chattanooga at night in December in the dark, thank God in heaven, and he funneled all his leftover anxiety into his feet, drove it into the rowing machine with his quads and hamstrings as he gave over to it, let it bleed his anxiety, his loneliness, the _bend_ and the **_Pull_**.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He’d sat on that plane and **_pulled_ ** his seatbelt tight around his hips, Mal on one side, Hux on the other, his knees knocking the seat in front of him, his head leaned back to gaze up at the flight attendant call button, the light fixtures, the cabin ceiling and he’d spent 6 hours and 50 minutes taxiing, flying and taxiing again deciding how to make money, get sober and be with Rey at the same time. He had a goal - _many_ goals now, actually - and as he **_pulled_ ** himself together he formulated a plan.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

“I love you,” he had said, never surer of anything, ready to work, ready to show her, ready to channel his strength into anything that means she’s with him. “Give me a smile. Tell me you love me back,” needing to hear it, needing to know she wouldn’t **push** him away.

“Ben,” she’d said with a smile on the screen, always giving, always taking, always sharing and opening and inviting and seeing and **_pulling_ ** him, “I love you so much.”

 

That was what was powering him now, propelling him, driving him.

The _bend_ of his knees his fight song, the **_Pull_ ** of his back his anthem.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

 

He had learned it young, he knew how to do this, he was good at it, he’d get lost in it.

 

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

_bend_

**_Pull_ **

********


	5. Light

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by the beautiful rileybabe
> 
>  
> 
> NORTH SHORE Chapter 11 drops Thursday, May 3
> 
>  
> 
> xo

  


 

_"Love it the light that you see by."_

\- Bess Streeter Aldrich 

 

 

Light.

 

He’s got to get up and go pull back the curtains and get some light again.

 

Even if he’s scared, even if he’s going to have to pay, no matter what, Ben knows what he needs.

 

This is too scary.

 

His heart pounds wildly, rapping on the wall of his chest like a hummingbird escaping a cage and his hands shake slightly as he pulls back just the corner of his blankets, his right foot bravely peeking out from under his pile of covers.

 

It’s very possible the monster under his bed can already sense his foot is uncovered and he’s not ready to dangle it yet but, he’s gathering his courage to do so because he knows there is one way and one way _only_ to get some more light in his bedroom and it’s up to him to make it happen.

He’s on his own and he knows it.

 

Last night he was a little too loud as he’d run and jumped back into bed after opening his curtains and Elena had arrived right on time, not 60 seconds later and reprimanded him in her Spanish-accented English, loving and firm.

 

“Benjamin,” she’d said in an authoritative tone, his name sounding more gentle than her words should convey, “no, no, no. Is no good for your eyes, this light. Is too bad. Close the curtains,” she’d said as she pulled them shut again, “and go to sleep. No getting out of bed, Chiquito. No light. No mas. Sí?”

 

Ben had nodded, the covers tucked in around himself again and Elena patted his thick thatch of brown hair once he’d laid his head against the pillow again and then he watched as she waddled to the door, shutting it tightly again behind her, darkness settling over the room like a black knit shroud, suffocating and terrifying and assuring 8-year-old Ben Solo he was about to die a monstrous, scary, bad death and that Freddy Krueger, whom he had seen on the TV commercials was likely the one coming to harm him in the dark.

 

Tonight, maybe he could get away with opening the curtains without alerting either Elena or Freddy Kruger or any other monster waiting to snatch him when he climbed down from his full-size bed, dashed across the carpet, yanked open the curtains of his window and flew back to his bed, hopping in as silently as possible, far enough from the bed no one could reach out and grab his ankles but, close enough he could still make it to the center of the mattress in one jump, holding his breath the entire time.

 

It wasn’t fair, after all.

His mom had hired Elena to be the housekeeper and, Ben wasn’t so sure he needed a babysitter anymore and anyhow, that wasn’t even her job.

He liked her fine, Elena from Tijuana.

He liked her cooking and her singing voice and her lap when she pulled him up to read him a book occasionally even though he fussed and pretended he hated it and he was way too old for being rocked like a baby. He liked how she smelled like tortillas and how she was soft and wide like a grandma and how she had no patience for his father when Han came around his mother’s house.

Elena raised one eyebrow at Han and pretended she couldn’t understand him most of the time, even though Ben knew for a fact she could.

 

It still didn’t mean Ben appreciated being parented by her, especially when his mom wasn’t around to pit them against one another, especially when Elena insisted a nightlight was bad for Ben’s eyes and a hallway light was even worse and pulling the curtains closed was second nature to her as she walked through the house in the evenings.

 

It’s just too dark in here though no matter what Elena thinks.

 

Ben takes a breath to steel his nerves, deciding a fate worse than death is better than a night of darkness alone and he moves his right foot precariously over the edge of his tall bed as if hovering above a pit of snapping alligators, hungry for little boy feet.

 

It’s right there - the window with the curtains is right there and he only has to jump down and go chase the stars for 10 feet before he can grip the edge of the curtain and fling it wide and then he just does it, he leaps and scurries faster than a mouse chasing cheese, he catches himself before he falls and makes a mad reach for the long strip of fabric, wildly throwing it back from the sill, piercing star shine filtering directly from the pinpoint of light in the black sky overhead, a clock face with the heavy white moon in the center of the dark California night sky glowing down on him as he ran and leapt into his bed across the room.

 

His heart thumping dramatically, Ben scooted over to the far edge of his bed, careful to protect his appendages from whatever blood-thirsty monster lived beneath his bed and was surely now angered to have been denied such a tantalizing meal of a little boy as Ben was, and he propped his head against a doubled-over pillow in the prime position, just where he wanted it, just where he needed it to be positioned so he could see the stars from his bed.

 

It was worth it.

 

Any fear, any consequence he faced, any reprimand it was worth it to have this light shining into his room.

 

It was so much brighter all of a sudden.

It was all he needed, just a little light, even if it damaged him in some unknown way it was so worth it. He had to have it.

It helped him be brave.

 

************

 

“What have you been up to, handsome?” Rey asks over FaceTime on Christmas, her sleepy face and messy bun a little bit of beauty on a sterile and cold Colorado noon.

 

“Pain in the ass dinner with my mom and her friends,” Ben says with an eye roll, “I swear to God, it doesn’t matter how old you get, or who you are, having dinner with your parents and their friends sucks.”

 

It’s a wintry, snowy, blinding morning in Colorado, fucking freezing and Ben can’t stand to be indoors when he could be outside skiing or snowboarding or hiking in the sunshine or something, but, it’s Christmas Day, after brunch and he’s _still_ housebound today. The only thing that could have worked to incite him to stay inside happily would’ve been Rey and she’s in Tennessee today.

How that happened, he’s still trying to figure out but, it sucks.

 

There is no point in a snow-packed wonderland of fun if your girl isn’t around to enjoy it with you.

Everything feels tiring and gray and overdone and commercial and heavily-marketed.

The bright world around Ben is more caustic than inviting like this, and he’s more inclined to squint in this kind of brightness, jarring and migraine-inducing.

 

It was so much better all of a sudden with Rey’s presence in this house, in the bed with him, even this way.

It was all he needed, just a little of her light, a little of her goodness and authenticity and beauty, no matter what it ever cost him, this was so worth it. He had to have it.

It helped him be himself.

 

“I wish I was there in bed with you instead,” he sighs, propping an arm behind his head against the wall, annoyed he’s dressed in a shirt and pants while she looks adorable in cozy pjs, making him feel even further from her, sitting in his mom’s house with it’s endless floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking shiny, white mountains of icy snow, the glare reflecting too harshly, the effect one which makes Ben shake his head and turn away, roll his eyes, take a Tylenol, “or you were here with me.”

She has no idea how true those words are.

“Me too,” he hears Rey say, “what do you have to do now?”

 _“Nothing,”_ he says in relief, “I’m _done._ I’m putting my feet up and talking to my girl now.”

 

Anyone who bothers him in this room now will catch his immense annoyance.

Ben is not feeling joyous, not feeling very charitable or gracious anymore and his mom being on his case since he flew in yesterday has only made him more tense and less pleased to be here.

He’s a fucking _saint_ for being here at all, not at home in his condo with Rey and not at her place in Tennessee but, being parented by a distracted actress-hostess of a mother at her cavernous, echoing new house in Aspen, one Ben’s only been to once before and frankly, he would never have chosen, even with its hot tub on the deck and view of the mountains and 5 garage stalls.

 

“Where are you?” Rey asks him. “Right now. What room are you in?”

“Guest room,” Ben says, leaning back against the headboard, the first time he’s had a moment to himself since he woke up.

“Are you on a bed?” Rey asks.

“Yeah,” he says, wondering if she’s asking him what he _hopes_ she’s asking him.

He focuses on her movement and sees her sit up on one elbow and slip her sweatshirt off her shoulder.

Ben sits up a little and raises an eyebrow, his breath hitching a little and his cock twitching to life with hope.

 

She has his undivided attention as he sees her move to sit criss-cross on the bed and pull her sweatshirt up over her pretty head, her bun hanging messily, making him think already about fucking her hair up by screwing her hard and slow and deep, hair wisping around her like an aura.

Ben sees her toss the sweatshirt and move the phone so he can take it all in: her sheer, lacy bra, her smooth lips and sleep-pink cheeks, her sweet tits hiding nipples his mouth waters to engulf, her taut belly and sharp collarbones and tiny earrings in soft lobes, her sparkling eyes in a face of peace looking at him like she loves him back, like he’s her universe, too and her whole body shimmering at him softly like a star against the black room behind her, illuminated and central.

 

 _"Fuck,_ baby doll,” Ben says, before jumping off the bed and heading to the door telling her, “I am locking this fucking door.”

He refocuses on her interestedly when he props himself back on the bed, back straight against the headboard.

“Gonna join me?” she asks, raising eyebrows, motioning to his shirt.

He complies as quickly as humanly possible, unbuttoning and tossing his shirt aside haphazardly, compliant as a schoolboy, and resumes watching.

 

If anyone comes to the door he will fucking _lose it_ on them.

Rey slips her pajama pants off and throws them on the ground, sitting with her knees beneath her in the center of her bed patiently as she completes her task.

Ben follows suit, silent, watching her intently.

She reaches behind her, eyes trained on his face on her phone and he watches as she catches her bra in the back, unfastens and lets it slide off, baring herself to him completely as her straps fall and the fabric slides off her body onto the bed at her knees.

“Fuck, _fuck,_ baby, you are so beautiful,” he groans.

 

_This may kill him. This may be how he goes. It is fine if that’s the case._

 

He takes himself in hand and starts to pump his cock before he even thinks about it consciously, naked and desperate to be between her legs, focused intently on how humanly close he can approximate the sensation of making love to her.

 

She reaches up and twists her own nipple in her hand, moaning softly and letting her head loll backward and Ben thinks maybe he’s levitating. Maybe he’s dead already.

He’s seen porn, he’s a guy after all but, this? A woman this hot who loves him and belongs to him who is acting like a slutty schoolgirl for him over the phone?

 

_Yep…he may be dead. This is a dream. It’s got to be._

He didn’t even tell her this is how he wants it and he’s about to get off on it so hard.

 

He works his cock in his hand, let’s his hips thrust up into his grip and imagines it’s her pussy, her sweet, tight little cunt, so pretty and wet for him in his hands, and refuses to look down at his own hand, allowing himself the fantasy it’s her body bringing him this heat, this pressure, this pain.

She reaches up and pulls the rubber band from her hair in one movement, her hair tumbling over her shoulders and Ben gently bangs his head against the back wall, just to relieve the pressure of how exquisitely good this feels.

He moans again, a whisper, _“holy fuck,”_ this has got to be the single most erotic thing he’s ever seen.

 

EVER.

 

_Can you die from blacking-out when you come? Because he might._

 

He pumps slowly as he watches her worshipfully run her fingers over her skin - her neck, her throat, down her breasts and into her panties, pulling them off, still seated on her knees and he is wholly mesmerized.

She’s like a burning flare of white light in that darkened room behind her, like white heat and shooting flames and flaring cinders from a sparkler.

 

“This is what I do when I touch myself and think about you, Ben,” he hears her and he feels himself nearly lose it, nearly finish right then and there, just the thought she’s thinking of him, _Dear God,_ it’s the actual closest he’s ever come to a heart attack his chest squeezes so hard.

“Oh my God, Rey. _Fuck, baby,_ let me see, show me,” he begs, his breathing hitching, his shoulder twitching with effort as his hand moves against himself off camera furiously.

She complies and slides the phone lower, giving him access to her hand and its movement against her, sliding and pressing and imitating, murdering him slowly as he watches her fingers in her soft pussy.

She is so wet, so wide open and wet, and beautiful as a painting he feels like she’s living, breathing ecstasy rolled up in one human woman.

Like she’s a drug - better than any drug he’s ever snorted, ever drunk, ever swallowed, she’s beauty personified and it nearly kills him dead he can’t physically touch her.

 

_How did this happen again, he in Colorado and she in Tennessee?_

 

“Ben,” she tells him, her bright hazel eyes shining like twin beacons in a dark night, calling him like a sailor lost at sea who finally glimpses a lighthouse, “I’m gonna come now, and it’s all for you. It’s for you, Ben, _you._ Watch. This is what you do to me,” a gasp cutting her off as she throws her head back in the throes of a crest on the final word.

 

He’s never seen anything so remarkable, so stunning in his whole goddamn life and lightning tightens around him and courses through him as he watches her climax, finishing in his own hand hot and powerless and overcome and out of energy to do more than thank God she’s his girl.

_His._

 

“I love you,” she whispers quietly, her eyes teary and lovely, Ben’s ravaged heart still recovering and finding it difficult to identify a steady rhythm again, heartbreak meeting him at the apex of passion.

“I love you so goddamn much, Rey. I miss you, baby doll. It’s fucking too much, I miss you too much.” He means it.

This feels like more than should be asked of him, seeing her so naked and hot and beautiful and giving and so fucking far away and now sad. It’s more than he can bear, it’s got to be technically more than _any_ man could bear.

 

“Me too,” she says, laying down on her side again, stretching her knees out and pulling a blanket up over her chest.

“I’m so lonely for you, Ben,” she confesses, and he feels his head roar in anguish, _Christ, what can he do? What can he do?_ Powerlessness is not a good look for a man and it could drive him insane.

_He’s got to fix this. How does he fix this?_

“Don’t cry, beautiful,” he says softly. _“God,_ I cannot take it, Rey. Please don’t cry, baby, you’re killing me,” he insists, a break in his voice.

Rey sniffles.

 

He knows she isn’t weak and this is noteworthy that she’s even letting him see a little of her truest emotion and if this is what she’s letting him see, the truth is far, far worse and his heart is just wilting to ashes watching her sadness from all the way out here.

“I’m just so thankful you’re here like this, Ben,” she says, “I’m so thankful I can see you a little today.”

“Me too, baby,” he says. “me too. It’s better than nothing, and I’m thankful, too, but, this is a mistake, being apart today. I don’t know how this happened - me in Colorado and you in Tennessee but this is wrong - it’s just wrong. We are supposed to be together. This is not okay.”

 

 _That’s it,_ he decides.

_This shit is getting locked down ASAP._

 

“This is the last Christmas we are spending like this, Rey,” Ben says. “Apart like this.”

 

This has just become non-negotiable.

He has to get to her.

Or he has to get to her _to him_.

He was not built for this, not for being apart from Rey.

No.

They are not meant to be apart, he is not meant to be in the dark. He needs the light. She’s it and he needs her.

This is _bullshit._

 

Any fear, any consequence to face, any reprimand it was worth it to have this light shining into his world.

 

He’s got to get up and go pull back the curtains and get some light again.

  

Even if he’s scared, even if he’s going to have to pay, no matter what Ben knows what he needs.

 

Light.

 

*********

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You really are the most irreplaceable, invaluable, incomparable readers ever.  
> It is a joy to write for you all.
> 
>  
> 
> Your words of affirmation mean the world!  
> THANK YOU for being here and reading North Shore & True North.
> 
>  
> 
> NORTH SHORE Chapter 11 drops Thursday, May 3  
> <3


	6. Landing

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by the beautiful rileybabe  
> beta'd by the wonderful uselessenglishmajor
> 
>  
> 
> SURPRISE! Dropping Chapter 13 The North Shore THURSDAY, May 10 because I am a sucker. 
> 
> xo  
> Berry

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

_“Landing on the shores of normalcy is wonderful,_

_especially after being tossed_

_around in the_

_sea of sickness.”_

\- Khang Kijarro Nguyen

 

_“Ladies and gentlemen, we’ve been cleared for landing at Lihue Airport. Please make sure one last time your seat belt is securely fastened. Flight attendants are gonna pass through the cabin one final time and pick up any remaining cups and glasses. Should be on the ground in around 5 minutes or so. Thank you.”_

 

Alright so, maybe Christmas wouldn’t be so bad after all.

 

It had been a long and boring 6-hour flight from LAX and Ben was feeling squished, antsy and overheated in his airplane seat, buckled in beside his mom who was busy reading a People magazine and he had long since become bored watching the endless blue Pacific spreading out beneath the plane in a vast expanse of bluejay water and sky, indeterminate where the horizon merged them both.

 

He liked flying, what 7 year-old boy didn’t, planes were awesome - but, he was done with his pile of Mad magazines, his watered-down Coke and even his Gameboy couldn’t hold his attention anymore.

 

Ben sat up straighter in his chair and lifted his chin to press his forehead against the clear, round plexiglass window of the aircraft and watched in expectancy as they made their final approach to Kauai. In spite of himself and his reluctance to spend Christmas break somewhere he wasn’t familiar with, his parents were vacationing with him _together_ and he felt his heart speed up at the prospect of seeing his dad when they landed.

 

Han had promised they’d hike to a waterfall, wear leis and go to a luau, swim at Queen’s Bath, eat Hawaiian burgers with pineapple and get shave ice. He’d even seen his mom pack a new bikini and oversized straw hat for the trip so he really, _really_ hoped it all meant they’d be a real family this week and maybe his parents wouldn’t fight.

 

He didn’t believe in Santa anymore but, he was still hoping someone would remember how much he wanted that one skateboard.

If by some chance there _was_ a Santa, there was magic involved anyhow, he circled the globe in one night and visited kids in Hawaii, too so Ben figured it was safe to leave mainland USA for Christmas.

 

 _“Woah,”_ Ben breathed out loud as his eyes fell on black cliffs rising straight up from the oceanic void he’d been surrounded by for so many hours.

 

Suddenly, green, cloud-swathed mountains and arching, sky scraping palm trees waved from the balcony of towering shore, the edge of the island erupted from the water as if it had popped up above the water like a plastic toy at the surface in a bathtub.

Before he could even make sense of it, the plane was floating to the runway just past the precipitous edge of land, the flight over, the blue sea they’d hovered above for so long a memory at the fringe of a tropical dream made entirely of verdant volcano and green hills.

 

_“Ladies and gentlemen, welcome to Lihue Airport. Local time is 4:00 pm and the temperature is a perfect 78 degrees, light winds out of the southwest and no clouds. Basically, it’s heaven on Earth out there, folks.”_

 

Looking at his mom, he felt his face mirror back her bright smile, sheer joy radiating off her like she already had a sunburn, her eyes lit up like it was already Christmas morning even though it was only the 22nd.

 

“We’re going to have the _best_ time,” she enthused to him, squeezing his hand and heart simultaneously as she leaned in to Eskimo kiss his nose with hers, looking past him afterward to watch the lush landscape slow with the taxiing of the plane heading for its gate.

 

Ben stared at her face, 10 years dissolved from her skin during the duration of their flight from Los Angeles, her festive energy overflowing into his body at this proximity, Christmas and his dad and Hawaiian delights awaiting them, a holiday of dreams just outside the heavy airplane door, maybe a happily ever after like the ones in the movies his parents made in store for them after all, just down the jetway in the open air concourse.

 

Maybe this would be the best Christmas ever.

Maybe this would change everything.

Maybe everything would be different now.

 

Now that they’d landed he wanted to stretch, move, run, find his dad, enjoy Christmas, see what this whole Hawaiian holiday thing was supposed to be all about.

He was here now and it was all going to be so awesome.

 

When you landed somewhere there was always the promise of adventure, the excitement of what lay beyond the door but, whatever awaited him this time, Ben was sure it was bound to be good.

 

8 days later, Ben and his mom flew back to LA.

Leia’s hat stayed in her suitcase all week and Ben skim boarded the waves while she lounged under an umbrella unhappily nearby that Christmas, his father joining them two days late and leaving Hawaii just two days after that.

 

It was the furthest feeling from _family_ he could have imagined.

 

****************

  


_“Alright folks, we’ve been cleared for landing into Charleston International. Please make sure one last time your seat belt is securely fastened. Our Atlanta-based flight attendants are coming through the cabin one final time to pick up any remaining trash. We’ll be on the ground in under 10 minutes and again, please stay buckled until we’ve turned off the ‘fasten seatbelt’ sign.”_

 

If anything, Ben couldn’t get off this plane fast enough.

 

The flight had only taken two hours and change, but Ben was landing in a completely different world. He knew he had only a brief 2-hour drive to Parris Island, and recruit receiving would begin immediately. He was about to get his hair shaved off, his clothes packed away and his identity whittled down to the bare minimum of strength, agility and submission he was made of, about to see how far the force of patriotism had propelled him as he made his way off this plane and into boot camp.

 

He’d hated this flight. The turbulence was a fucking nightmare with that hurricane offshore, his nerves were shot to hell flying completely sober and he’d been seated in a middle seat between a sweaty, young mother and her swaddle of nursing baby and a businesswoman in a pencil skirt who typed on her laptop, her long, lacquered fingernails clacking like a set of stiletto heels on tile, driving him bananas the whole time.

 

His stomach had barely settled down after the shouting match he’d had with his dad last night while his mom was attempting to throw him a going away bash at her Manhattan penthouse, the noise of the party downstairs only amplifying Ben’s tone with Han as they’d argued about some dumb shit in Han’s last email, each of the Solo men unable to verbalize their respective anxiety about Ben’s impending departure to Marine life.

 

Han was still upset Ben wouldn’t be around to look after his mom even though he, _himself_ hadn’t done that for nearly 20 years and Ben was hurt Han hadn’t made time to come out this month even though he knew Ben was enlisting and leaving…though Ben couldn’t have told you that’s what he was feeling while they argued.

 

“Fuck, dad, I don’t have _time_ for this right now,” Ben had shouted over the phone louder than necessary, the party below offering him an excuse to escalate.

 

“Why the fuck not, huh?” Han had shouted back, annoyed to be yelled at and still smarting from Ben’s insistence to ignore his advice and enlist. “No time for your old man?”

 

“Cuz there’s a fucking party downstairs right now and it’s too fucking loud for this,” he complained to his dad, adding, “and if you wanted to do this you could’ve gotten on a plane anytime this last month and come and fuckin’ yelled at me in person!”

 

“Christ, Ben, you know it’s not that easy,” Han sighed with an exasperated huff, “I’ve got a fucking _job,_ I can’t just get on a plane and fly across the goddamn country because my kid wants to go save the country. I have work to do, I can’t just disappear.”

 

“Yeah, whatever, Dad,” Ben said, resigned, thinking of all the times Han had indeed just disappeared, “I gotta go.”

 

“Ben, wait,” Han started, “listen…”

 

Ben paused for a split second, just long enough to catch whether his dad actually had anything to follow up that _“hey, kid, listen…”_ line he always started with and as soon as he recognized that _no,_ his dad was about to bluff his way through a non-apology, he didn’t have anything of substance to give Ben to soothe the rejection he felt of his father’s inability or refusal to see him off, and then he cut Han off instead.

 

“I gotta go, Dad,” he repeated, “really. See ya,” he said finally, and clicked the phone closed, only vaguely hearing Han tell him “okay, kid. Okay,” from a distance through his darkening phone.

 

Now it was lunchtime the following day and Ben wasn’t sure what was taking more of a toll on his stomach: his argument with his dad the night before, the crunched position he’d wedged his tall frame into on the plane between two other passengers, the choppy air the plane had tumbled around while in the air, or his nerves about getting to camp but, the first thing he wanted to do was find a garbage can and puke his guts up when he got unbuckled and out of this flying tin can.

 

The brown water of the marshy Atlantic coast snaked around the South Carolina tidewater islands and outer banks like a cluster of squirming serpents in a wicker basket, all green and blue, winding pathways of water through low-lying peninsula and inlets, roads and cars and developments sucking up any space right to the rim of land. The airport lay before the plane like a beckoning port, the straight runway at odds with the bent streams and landforms of the space around it, and Ben felt his muscles clench and prepare for touchdown before it even happened.

 

_“Welcome to Charleston International Airport. It is now 11:35 am local time and it’s 58 degrees, getting pretty stormy out there. Sorry again about the turbulence, please keep your seat belts on until the captain has turned off the ‘fasten seat belts’ sign.”_

 

Ben looked past the woman beside him, her baby crying as she attempted to comfort him, and he watched the gloomy landscape roll by as the plane taxied. He’d never been to South Carolina before and for all his travels, he couldn’t remember ever having had as shitty a flight as this one had been. He wasn’t completely sure what to attribute that to but, the bottom line was he was ready to get off this damn plane and get _on_ with it already.

 

Maybe his dad was right and he was making a rash, ultimately pointless sacrifice.

Maybe his mom was right and he’d hate it and be home within a year.

Maybe he’d regret the whole thing and they’d be right and he’d have to admit it.

 

Now that they’d landed he wanted to try though, to unfold his limbs and get out of this seat, get a cab and get on the road to the MCRD, calm his belly, feel everything stop moving under his feet for once.

He was here now and it was all going to be starting.

 

When you landed somewhere there was always the shock of what had transpired while you were in the air, the hope things would be different when you exited the flight, and whatever awaited him this time, Ben was sure it was bound to be better than last night.

 

One week later, Ben pulled on his uniform and got ready for the morning run, surrounded by other recruits with matching haircuts in the barracks.

 

He’d been shorn, dressed and renamed with every other newly minted Marine candidate in the last seven days and he hadn’t even been alone to take a piss, that’s how much togetherness he’d experienced.

 

It was the furthest feeling from _fun_ he could have imagined.

 

*************

 

_“Okay everybody, this is your captain on the flight deck. We’ve been cleared for landing at Tampa International. One final time, please go ahead and make sure your seat belt is securely fastened and stow any carry-on luggage under the seat in front of you or in an overhead bin. We’re getting in around 15 minutes early, had a good tail wind out of Denver, and we’re arriving at gate C3. See you on the ground soon.”_

 

Maybe this trip was just what Ben needed.

 

He’d never traveled with Jen before, they’d only been together officially around two months now and even though they had their challenges in communicating, maybe this was just what the doctor ordered, some fun and relaxation, some sand and saltwater. He was pretty tired, having filmed some re-shoots and spent most days working out by 5am to get ready for the next Ren film, and some time to refuel sounded exactly right.

 

Jen texted furiously on her phone beside him in the window seat, resolutely ignoring the instructions from the captain and crew to stow her electronic device in an airplane setting and he brushed his fingertips over her bare knee, tilted over her crossed legs beside him.

 

“You should see this,” he murmured, leaning nearer to her and looking at the waterscape below. “Surreal. Look.”

 

Flying it to Tampa was intriguing, so much water from the Gulf impeding on the coastal cities that hugged the shoreline, it was unbelievable from this angle people lived so close to the water like that, connected to one another by bridges in every direction, a constellation of land connected against the odds in an endless wonderland of water.

Whole neighborhoods stretched for as far as the eye could see up and down the coast, no barrier between the homes and the vast blue beyond, everyone below oblivious and safe, contentedly surrounded by swamp, sharks, alligators.

 

“Fascinating,” she said without looking, still texting. Abruptly, she turned to Ben and smiled brightly, her face cracking wide and pecked his lips, “when we get there, I need to go first thing and meet my publicist,” Jen said, before returning to her phone, apparently wrapped up in the details of her arrival to the film festival that was showing her latest film this week.

 

Ben didn’t respond, he just watched the blues and green get closer and closer to the window and looked at his watch. It was 2:20 which meant hopefully he could get to the hotel by 4, hopefully, Jen would be around for dinner, hopefully, he could enjoy half a day just chilling out. Hopefully, she didn’t want fucking _salad_ for dinner. He was sick of salad.

 

“I oughta be done with my publicist by drinks tonight,” Jen told him, still texting. “Think you can behave on your own without me till then?”

 

“Sure,” Ben told her, watching as the plane turned hard and aligned for landing.

Maybe he could get a swim in, maybe get some room service, maybe a nap. The last thing he wanted was to dress up and go downstairs for drinks in a hotel bar but, he knew Jen would want to, they’d done that even while back in LA and he would humor her, it’s fine. He had a sports jacket. It’s fine.

 

_“Okay everybody, welcome to Tampa International, the local time is 2:04 pm and we’re about to park at the gate. Keep your seat belts on till we do so, please. We know you have a choice when you fly, thank you for choosing us.”_

 

“Uh, what’s your plan this week?” Jen asked absently as she typed away.

 

“My plan?” Ben asked, somewhat confused. _Hadn’t they discussed this? Why was he here if not to be with her?_

 

“Yeah,” she repeated. “Like, are you gonna just be at the hotel, or…” she offered, finally turning to look at him, hands still poised to type.

 

“I mean,” Ben turned his head suspiciously at her and continued, “I thought I was here to be with you.”

 

“Oh _yeah_ , yeah, I mean - of _course,_ but, I mean, besides that,” she said, everyone around them unbuckling and moving to get their items from the closed bins above their heads, “what are you gonna do, like, during the day?”

 

Ben had no answer for this. Frankly, he was confused by the question.

This felt like a conversation they’d had. Or at least, a conversation that _could’ve_ happened when she asked him to join her when he spoke to her from Denver, not then they were disembarking in Florida.

He looked at her blankly.

He knew what film festivals were about, he’d done them before, he knew there was no reason he couldn’t spend the day with her while they were here, no reason her time had to be spoken for with work. There would be plenty of time for jet skis, for sex, for waves and resting and fun and vacationing. If she didn’t know that, maybe he just needed to tell her.

She’d like that.

 

He grabbed both their rolling suitcase carry-ons and walked them down the jetway, Jen beside him.

“I’m going to be with you…” he said, watching her face and then switching gears when he realized _no, dumbass, look at her face, she doesn’t want that,_ and redirected, saying, “or, whatever, I’ll find something, don’t worry about it.”

 

Jen smiled and slowed to walk behind him, taking a handful of his shirt in her fist so she could look down and type with one hand into her phone while she lowered her head and walked, shielded from view and able to multitask at the same time.

 

Maybe he should turn right back around and get back on the plane.

Maybe this was a mistake.

Maybe he wasn’t clear about his wishes and intentions and he just needed to be more direct next time.

 

Now that they’d landed he wanted to get rejuvenated, revived, recharged, and he just needed to recalibrate to figure out a new game plan if that’s not what Jen had also envisioned for this trip together. He could get a coffee, head to the hotel, get a swim and a shower and freshen up, get her to smile at him and maybe get laid later. Hopefully.

No need to ditch altogether, it could be salvaged, even if it was different than he had imagined.

 

He was here now and it was all going to be fine.

 

When you landed somewhere there was always the initial sensation of adjustment, the feeling of getting used to a new reality, and whatever awaited him this time, Ben was sure it was going to be just what he needed.

 

Four days later, Ben departed Florida heading back to California emotionally, physically and sexually empty. He’d spent far too many hours watching TV and drinking from the minibar, making appearances at whatever event Jen wanted him to attend with her, and he’d only gone to the pool once to swim. It was depressing, how little he had accomplished and he felt like a lead weight as he slumped into first class alone, Jen heading for England and then Germany, and hopefully nothing but a great nap for the next several hours on his own agenda.

 

It was the furthest feeling from _fuel_ he could have imagined.

 

************

 

_“As we begin our descent into Toronto, we’d ask that you please bring your seat backs and tray tables to their full upright position. Flight attendants, prepare for landing please.”_

 

This was definitely Ben’s new favorite way to travel.

 

He’d known all along he was leaving today to head up to Canada to get ready to start filming tomorrow and he’d been crestfallen when Hux called to alert him to bad weather blowing into Tennessee from the west but, he’d never been more relieved than when Rey agreed, however reluctantly to come with him. He’d never been more certain of anything in his life than her, of the way they are together and with the scrutiny he’d been under since the DUI, the pressure of making a movie he could be proud of that would satisfy Snoke, and make some money for the studio, he was so sure he would function at his best if she was with him and he’d been elated when she agreed.

 

Looking at her now, childlike wonder written all over her face like she was masked in it, Ben smiled in satisfaction that maybe he was right, maybe this was how it was supposed to be all along, side-by-side taking on their demons together, having one another’s backs, being a team and he was thrilled he had such a knockout of a partner.

 

“How do you have a passport but, no stamps in it?” he asked when Rey looked over at him with a jubilant smile, his contentment making space for curiosity.

 

“Oh, I needed a passport for I.D.” she explained. “I never got a driver’s license, I never needed one,” she told him, her eyes dropping to her hands where they fiddled with her seatbelt. “I couldn’t afford a car. I didn’t want to use my Uncle John’s money he left me for that, it would’ve been all gone if I’d used it for a car and then, I’d still have to pay for things like gas and insurance. And I couldn’t drive my foster families’ vehicles. So, then, I just rode a bus for college and decided to get a passport for identification instead of a license that wouldn’t do me any good anyway. And now, I can walk wherever I need to go in the North Shore.”

 

Ben leaned over and unbuckled her belt, pulling her onto his lap and he thought what a lucky bastard he was, how sweet this little woman of his was, how precious and important and strong and beautiful and he couldn’t keep his hands off her one more second.

 

“And everyone just watched this treasure walk around town, just saw you go by on your own two little feet, and somehow I managed to be the one you crashed into who finally made you stop walking,” he said quietly, looking into her vulnerable eyes, all worried and stoic, trying to seem unaffected by the fucking heartbreaking things she’d just told him.

 

Rey smiled down at him from her perch in his lap, her arms wound around his neck, right where he wanted them.

 

“I’m getting you a car,” he announced, looking straight ahead, determination staking down into his heart.

 

“Oh, no you’re not,” Rey said, obstinately from his lap, all tiny, defiant, beautiful woman of her. “I’ll keep walking. I never even learned how to drive. It’s fine.”

 

“You just need a teacher,” Ben said, kissing her shoulder, wrapping her up in his chest, “and I fucking love to drive, I’ll teach you. You’ll love it too, I just gotta get you something as much a sweet, little spitfire as you are,” he told her definitively, kissing her to keep her from arguing.

 

Rey rolled her eyes, “I can _walk_ ,” she stressed again between kisses.

 

“And wait for you to run smack into some other bastard on the street so he falls in love with you when you spill coffee all over him, too? No way, baby doll,” Ben told her.

 

He fucking loves this girl, he’d do anything for her, he’d die to keep her safe.

He’s about had it with her using fucking public transportation in a city he isn’t even in. All the more reason for them to be together, for them to be on this plane right now, for her to be with him.

 

The water under the plane was bright blue as a summer day, deceptively inviting for a very cold January afternoon in Canada and the US border was just beyond it. The river boundaries blended at the city’s perimeter, city buildings huddled for space crowding around the green spaces, water and industry and runway colliding in a spectacularly inviting harmony of sights, a city born to host with arms wide open, the plane hugged into an embrace as it landed gracefully.

 

_“Let me be the first to welcome you to Toronto Pearson International Airport. It is 4:22 pm and a brisk 25 degrees Fahrenheit. We should be parked at the terminal in about 2 minutes.”_

 

“Get used to me buying you shit,” he said, their hands laced, his chin jutting towards the window past Rey, motioning for her to look, too, ending the discussion for now.

 

Ben looked over at Rey as she stared at the world whizzing by as the jet made its way towards it’s parking place at the airport, wondering how he had scored this girl, how he had talked her into this, how she was wearing his bracelet on her arm and had her fingers laced between his, how he knew how her skin felt and looked and tasted and how she looked at him like he was strong and brave and maybe he fucking was.

 

Maybe this was the start of a new life.

Maybe this was a new year, a new movie, even a new method for survival.

Maybe he could talk her into doing this more often, and maybe it’s what he’d needed all along.

 

When you landed somewhere there was always the reminder you were out of your element, a stranger, a visitor, an indication this was impermanent and disposable and uncomfortable, but whatever awaited him this time, Ben was sure it was bound to feel different with Rey’s hand threaded with his on his knee while they made their way to their suite.

 

Six hours later Ben scooted closer to Rey in bed, scooping her into his arms, tucking her body into the curve of his chest and knees in front of him, tucking his hand between her belly and the mattress under them, realizing it was not only a different bed but, a completely different country they were going to sleep in than the one they woke in together and he could think of nothing more natural, more fulfilling than the realization they were together, no matter the shifting circumstances.

 

He’d managed the travel, the check-in, the logistics as he normally did but, he realized he had a bounce in his step as he did so, every moment since the landing a revelation of facets to process together, every step a journey with his girl, and it made him feel like he was as much at home in Toronto, of all places, as he was anywhere else, if he had access to Rey _._

 

 

The _family_ he’d wished for, the _fun_ he’d missed out on, the _fuel_ he needed, she was beside him and she colored his world in a million hues of beauty like a living kaleidoscope.

 

He brought it all with him, everything he needed, right in his hands.

No matter where he landed next time, he already knew she was all he’d need.

 

She was here now and it was all going to be right.

 

_**************************_


	7. Location

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> as always, lovely moodboard by the talented @rileybabe  
> and beta'd by the irreplaceable @uselessenglishmajor
> 
>  
> 
> NEW North Shore Chapter 14 Monday, May 14  
> and NEW True North Chapter 8 Tuesday, May 15
> 
> xo  
> Berry

 

 

 

 

_“The secret to a long marriage in the film industry?_

_Marry someone as wonderful as I did._

_And always have her come along on location.”_

\- Christopher Lee

  
  


Ben’s first steps happened on set, on location in Mexico.

 

His parents were filming a _Cosmic Battles_ film, the princess dressed in her signature white robe with a complicated hairstyle and Han in his dark pants and collared shirt, the prop blaster ironically visible in the holster slung low over his hips as they crouched on either side of Ben, beckoning him forward to stumble around between their bodies, like a newborn colt, some supporting cast in the background of the photo his mother kept framed on the hallway wall of her house in Bel Air.

 

Ben couldn’t remember that photo being taken, of course, he was 11 months old and clad only in a disposable diaper, drool hanging from his lip as he concentrated fiercely, his baby limbs stiff and outstretched as he raised a foot carefully to take a step, the moment permanently frozen in time, a foreshadowing of his life captured in one photo.

 

He would always be staggering between his parents who each called to him from opposite ends of every possible spectrum.

Always stiffly trying to figure out where to go.

 

Their locations constantly shifting.

 

His parents look so happy in that photo, so proud and so young, like life was promising and the world their oyster and their baby boy the pearl.

 

He learned to walk on location.

 

That was Mexico.

 

*************

 

The next time Ben went on location was the summer after kindergarten.

 

His dad was filming a _Kentucky Smith_ film in Utah and since school hadn’t begun yet, and it wasn’t that far, his mother and Ben’s uncle drove themselves up to see Han on location in his mom’s BMW, Ben sitting alone in the backseat for the hours it took them to cross state lines and he studied the raindrops as they raced one another on the outside of his car window as the car sped along the highway.

 

His mom played a lot of Carly Simon and Carol King CD’s, songs Ben can still remember and he thought how funny it was to hear them harmonize to The Carpenters when they sang, their nearly-identical twin voices in perfect harmony as they belted out tunes.

 

The clouds parted when they arrived near the set in the Utah desert, vast dunes covering the expanse when Ben stepped outside the car, endless, tan sand as far as the eye could see, his dad wearing a Stetson hat on his head, a leather whip over his shoulder and a smirk on his face.

 

Ben’s mom and dad disappeared for about a half hour while some boom operator showed him around set, gave him a _Kentucky Smith_ baseball cap to wear which slipped over his ample ears and found him a Snickers bar, and then his mom and uncle drove away, back to California, leaving Ben with his dad.

 

He doesn’t remember a single conversation they had after that but, he watched his dad work and he loved it.

 

He sat in the sun and sipped Capri Suns and snacked on Goldfish crackers and grinned at everyone who walked by and said to one another: “that Han’s kid?” and he watched his dad film for 13 straight days and turned brown as a walnut.

 

He learned to act on location.

 

That was Utah.

 

 

*************

 

Around age 9, Ben went on location to the Caribbean with his mom on a shoot.

 

She was cast as the best friend of the lead and they were shooting some scenes Ben couldn’t go watch for some reason, so he stayed behind at the hotel and made due chatting with the leftover crew, one older boy named Liam who teased him for his big ears and his dad’s lame movies, and a friendly, six-year-old little Haitian girl who spoke no English but, for whatever reason was always on the grounds.

 

He heard roosters in the distance all the time and ate tostones and arepas every day.

 

Ben swam all day in the pool by himself, practicing dives and handstands and fighting imaginary submarine battles, unless the little Haitian girl was around and they played Marco Polo once he taught her how to say it, and he asked his mom every night around bedtime for 7 days, when she got back from filming if she’d go swimming with him.

 

She did, twice and Ben loved it.

His mom let him dunk her and she counted while he held his breath and while he jumped into the pool over and over and over again until he was exhausted.

 

He learned to wait on location.

 

That was Dominican Republic.

 

**************

 

When he was 13, Ben went to Switzerland and hung out with the crew while his father shot a few stunts with his double in the Alps for an action film he was making.

 

He decided he was a fan of Switzerland, having all the chocolate and skiing he could handle but, his favorite part of the entire trip was the day he spent with his father traveling there.

He and his dad had watched a couple completely inappropriate movies on the plane, R-rated, bloody situations with lots of explosions and crazy stunts, and he relished hearing his dad whisper _“woah”_ every time he was impressed with something, knowing he was trying to understand the mechanics like Ben was as they watched.

 

Once they got to Europe, he’d had to share his dad’s attention with his girlfriend, Shayla and he fucking _hated_ Shayla.

She was an airline employee and she called him “Benji”, which he despised, and he had to concentrate in order to call her the right name instead of _“Trayla”_ like his mom did.

 

He couldn’t care less about actually being on set by that time, it was old hat and no one knew how to deal with a 13-year-old, neither old enough to employ or young enough to carry on a hip.

 

Pretty soon, he just decided to sit and play his Nintendo DS instead of even watching filming.

 

He learned to be invisible on location.

 

That was Switzerland.

 

************

 

By 17, the industry realized Ben was the son of two working, A-list actors and it basically recruited him.

 

He walked onto set in upstate New York the first day of his first job, a mid-budget thriller which cast him as the football player best friend of the lead, knowing he’d be slashed and hacked to death by the third act, and he shook like a leaf in his wardrobe, sweating pit stains in the dark undershirt under his prop letterman jacket.

 

He spent the whole filming experience on-set worrying about his armpits, taking note how wet his underarms were, thinking about whether anyone could smell him, and generally being anxious about whether the director would ask him to take the jacket off at any point, until they switched the order of deaths and he ended up being the second character killed off and he was mercifully done filming by Day 16 instead of Day 20.

 

He got tipsy every night with his co-stars and scored something of a girlfriend during filming, Nathalia, even though Ben was never completely sure she knew his _actual_ name as opposed to his character name, _Scott_ , or that she wasn’t just in it to hopefully meet his mom, whom she idolized.

 

When they broke up at the wrap party, Ben was relieved.

He went home single and far less nervous and stopped sweating like a sinner in church all day long.

 

He learned how to be an actor on location.

 

That was New York.

 

 

********

 

 

When he came home from the Middle East, Ben was 24 and thanks to Hux, he was cast without auditioning in a role that filmed in Australia immediately.

 

He was only home 5 weeks by then, and his hair hadn’t grown that long so, when he was reshaved for that role, he took the opportunity to adopt a completely different persona.

He became _Mark Flannery, USMC_ in a film of the same name, and it would have been cathartic maybe for Ben, who was newly home from overseas but, he hadn’t done anything really gratifying while deployed, having been medically discharged almost immediately when he’d gotten to Afghanistan due to breaking his sternum on a training run and it was beyond disappointing and fucking depressing and humiliating.

 

Putting the identical uniform back on, as well as the pressures of remembering lines when his brain felt so addled with the stress of switching from military life into civilian life and then into some sort of quasi-military state for the role was surreal and it left him spinning out, acting angry, tearful and feeling like he might be going crazy by the end.

 

He’d finished filming after a few months and flew to his mom’s Manhattan penthouse and slept for a month, let her make decisions for him and sleep in and he let his hair and beard grow out and he lived on takeout and his mother’s judgmental and worried frowns.

 

He started seeing a therapist around that time, Dr. Johnson, whom his mom made him an appointment with, and she helped Ben some but, by then all Ben really wanted was to get his own place and the fuck away from his mom.

 

He started letting himself feel things once he moved to California and found a better therapist, an Indian man who wanted to be called Rahul instead of Dr. Shah and he felt himself slowly thaw.

 

He learned how to numb on location.

 

That was Australia.

 

 

*********

 

 

On his 27th birthday, Ben was in Vegas on location, chasing down enemies astride a Harley and filming lasted until almost midnight.

 

He’d missed four calls from his mother while he filmed that day, two of them including renditions of the _“Happy Birthday”_ song on his voicemail, and three texts from Snoke about what the expectations were for this film, how much it was costing the studio, exactly how much the studio needed to make on this film and how it was his personal responsibility to make it happen.

 

The crew hired him a stripper as a birthday surprise and brought him, blindfolded to his co-star’s trailer around midnight, where a naughty nurse came to tell him he’d given her a fever and stripped to Peggy Lee’s _“Fever”_ while the entire crew howled, whistled and called him Birthday Boy while placing a paper crown on his head and a Cuban cigar in his mouth.

 

One of the guys handed him a birthday card, and the next day his dad texted him and told Ben he was the first one to hold him when he was born and how red-faced and angry a little nugget he’d been, all squished and screaming, and that he was sorry he’d missed his birthday but, they should get a drink and catch up when he was back home in L.A.

 

He’d fallen asleep that night around 3 AM and realized he never had cake.

He loved birthday cake and damn it, he really wanted some all of a sudden.

 

He got up and scrounged around until he found Hostess cupcakes and he ate three before he went back to bed.

 

He learned to be alone on location.

 

That was Las Vegas.

 

 

*********

 

Jen had been nominated for an Oscar twice by the time Ben met her, and since she was so in-demand and likely to win the statuette in a week or so, she had chosen a film that shot on location in Nice, France, one of the prettiest places Ben had ever seen.

 

They shared a luxurious room overlooking the water, high above the cliffside town overlooking the Mediterranean on the French Riviera, and the blue water sparkled up at them from below the balcony of their exclusive, sumptuous suite.

 

Everything about the space called for romance, the accents, the motif, even the movie she was filming which was a high art love story but, they fought like cats and dogs and he had the distinct feeling the expiration date on their relationship was approaching.

 

When Jen fought him too hard about going out versus staying in one night, she blurted out she was in love with someone else and while they argued about it, Ben decided he didn’t actually give a fuck, he wanted to be free of her anyhow but, when he made the mistake of telling her that she went him one better and told him she’d been sleeping with her co-star for 2 months and he was a better fuck than Ben, that he didn’t need coddling like Ben did and he wasn’t a washed-up, pathetic drunk like Ben.

 

He was a _real_ man, she’d scolded Ben, even though apparently he was cheating with Jen on his wife and mother of his three kids.

 

Her talent for acting was only eclipsed by her shittiness as a girlfriend and Ben flew out the next morning on the first flight out of Europe he could find, hopscotching his way across the Atlantic and the midwestern states until he got home and happily packed all her shit into three cardboard boxes which he left in her apartment as fast as he possibly could, leaving her key in the mailbox and her house locked up, nice and tight, just like her heart.

 

He learned to be free on location.

 

That was France.

 

 

***********

 

 

The next location Ben showed up at was Chattanooga, Tennessee.

 

He’d never been there before, couldn’t actually recall if he’d ever been in the state at all frankly, but he would only be here 2 weeks, just to shoot a couple scenes in a ramshackle warehouse district, long since vacated by industry and the perfect natural backdrop for the next Ren movie.

 

He’d been shooting for 3 days when he had an afternoon free and decided to go into town with Hux who was in dire need of a cup of coffee and since there was no Starbucks nearby, and everyone was always permanently sick of hotel room coffee, he walked the footbridge over the wide river to a simple string of shops which Hux’s app sent them to, looking for caffeine.

 

Ben decided he wasn’t thirsty after all and headed the other way, a purple door catching his eye and the sign above it boasting videos, something that reverberated in his brain pleasantly like a nostalgic whisper from his youth in the 90’s.

 

Twenty minutes later, he crashed headlong into the prettiest girl he’d ever seen, a slim, bright-eyed, apologetic beauty, covered in iced coffee and sailing across the threshold of his life like the first real thing he’d ever held in his hands, her pulse throbbing under the skin in her wrist like a neon light calling his name, drawing him closer til he interrupted himself and made himself step away.

 

He sent her a new phone since he’d fucking destroyed hers anyway, and she showed up like a shaft of southern sunshine, like walking moonshine, intoxicating him, right on his set, onto location and in that moment, Ben knew he had to get closer to her, had to get into her orbit, had to get near her.

He said his lines like a professional and then asked Mal to go collect the girl.

 

He didn’t know what it was but he already knew, the girl had what he needed.

 

He learned to take a chance on location.

 

That was Chattanooga.

 

 

**************

 

 

Stepping on set in Toronto was unlike any other single experience Ben had ever had on location before and he knew it before he stepped foot outside the car, knew it as they drove up and he felt a steady peace knock through his veins like Rocky’s theme song, flooding him with energy he could’ve also used to run up a steep set of stone steps before pumping his fists in the air, victorious.

 

Rey was with him and it changed everything, it charged the air around him and inflated his chest with pure, unadulterated pride.

 

She was the prettiest sunbeam, the sweetest gift, the most incredible woman he’d ever known, giving to a fault and fun and magnetic and fucking gorgeous and he was about to introduce her to a part of his life she’d never really seen before.

 

He was desperate to know if she was proud of him.

If she was impressed.

If she thought he was good enough, talented enough, strong enough to carry this thing off.

 

He filled up his tank with what he got from her eyes and her touch and her words and he sipped on it as he went about his day, his eyes flitting over to where she sat perched like a lovely statue of a goddess on the chair in the tent, her brow furrowed as she watched, her eyes never leaving the action they shot, her face breaking into a smile whenever he approached, which he did every solitary chance he got.

 

He hadn’t ever worked harder, hadn’t ever felt it flow more easily, hadn’t ever given his work less conscious thought and yet more energy than this shoot and he was already sure it would be his favorite shoot to date.

 

And it had literally everything to do with the fact Rey was here. With him. Where she fucking _belonged._

 

For sure.

He was getting her a ring.

ASAP.

A big one.

A big, fucking diamond worthy of the bright, shining love of his life.

 

He had to get this girl to marry his sorry ass.

 

Not so she would support his career, hell, there wouldn’t be any topping this experience, that felt certain, and sure, maybe he’d had to renegotiate an increase in the number of films he had to make for Snoke from 3 to 5 after the DUI  but, whatever.

He could do it. He could do anything if he had his girl.

 

He learned how to live on location.

 

That was Toronto.  

 

*************

 


	8. Loyalty

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> I gave rileybabe basically no time to make this art and yet....here it is. 
> 
> I gave uselessenglishmajor basically no time to beta this and yet...she did. 
> 
> I couldn't ask for better friends, partners in crime, sisters.  
> THANK YOU, BOTH. You know I am a hot, fancy mess. <3 
> 
> Reader,  
> I love you. 
> 
> xo  
> See you next Monday, May 21 on the North Shore ...  
> ...and next Tuesday, May 22 in the True North. 
> 
> Berry

 

 

 

 

 

_"There's nothing so loyal as love."_

\- Wyatt Earp

 

 

 

 

**********

 

He was a mega superstar film star of the 30’s and 40’s, romancer of the girl next door in real life but, also every blonde bombshell Hollywood could churn out on screen.

 

His intensity ran hot, close to the surface in every situation making him a more magnetic scene-chewer, a more mesmerizing lead, a more entrancing silver screen idol than anyone who came before him or tried to compete with him back then.

 

He’d come on the scene at age 20, brooding bedroom eyes lidded with temptation, a boyish charm eschewing propriety and a penchant for sarcasm that played well with audiences of all ages. He was believable in any role, in any part, in any category but, the papers loved him in real life almost as much as the one on screen and he navigated the waters swimming with paparazzi sharks well, even before such a thing fundamentally even existed.

 

13 movies in 6 years total, that’s all it took to make him a legend in his own time, a darling of the press.

 

His demure, dimpled wife, brunette where his co-stars were blonde and sweet where they were sexy, was the apple of his eye until his dying day.

Hers was the name he spoke first when he accepted his Oscar, the one on his arm at all times, the other half of his heart until the very end, no doubt possible.

 

When she died after their twins were born, he was despondent, drugged, depleted.

He handed the twins off to friends, unable to look at them for memory of his wife, and he took a lover to staunch the hemorrhage of pain.

 

When he strangled her in a haze of anguish, confusion, grief and pain, setting fire to the mansion on West Adams in Los Angeles, too addled to realize when it burned it would kill all 14 people downstairs, passed out from a bender of endless drugs and flowing alcohol, he walked shoeless into the Hollywood scrubby hills around the house until police found him in only underwear and a silk robe and carted him off to prison that way.

 

Three weeks later he was stabbed by an inmate, a distant relative of the bit actress he choked to death in his bed and he rejoined his wife in the clouds, nothing left but a horror story of love and tragedy, a berth in the mausoleum in Forest Lawn in the same hills he wandered that fateful night.

 

_Anakin was loyal to passion._

 

*********

 

She was anxious to purge herself of her surname, to shave away the shame of her parentage and pursue her dreams of her own accord, on her own two feet the way her _true_ parents had raised her, their sweet princess, to proceed.

 

Her insistence to chase down fame, to make a name for herself of her own creation, to ascend the heights of popularity and reign supreme as a debutante screen queen was her loftiest goal and one she set about to complete before she was a legal adult. There was no dissuading her, there was no chance of that, so with her twin brother’s oversight her parents set her loose in the same world that had stolen her birthright.

 

She ran the gamut from small parts to smaller until the role of a lifetime fell into her lap and she scooped it up with fervor as if it held all the answers, all the vindication, all the reward she sought to fill the gaping hole where her parentage lay.

 

She couldn’t have predicted she’d fall in love with the scoundrel opposite her, not even when he was perfectly cast as her romantic foil, not even when he kissed her on-screen, not until he’d pulled her against his chest outside the set on a street corner in a seedy part of the Hollywood strip, everything around suddenly fading in a storybook blur of irrelevancy.

 

She realized she’d broken every rule, every boundary established for herself to protect her, damned herself to love and she found herself helpless to fight it.

 

Within 8 months she was pregnant with her only son, her only hope for a bright, independent, future, a balance for all the drama of the generations before him, and when she confirmed his father was sleeping with someone else 2 weeks before her son was born she realized bitterly she had somehow been aiming for this all along, she’d lost a terrible race against the cruelty of a cursed family lineage.

 

He was born then, ruddy and beautiful, and she breathed a sigh of relief at his perfection but, not before weeping with loss that fueled her determination to be liberated, autonomous, defiant and durable.

 

_Leia was loyal to survival._

 

***********

 

He was stifled by anything that hemmed him in more permanently than pants, delirious with the need to fly free as a bird his whole life, likely a remnant of his youth growing up on a midwestern farm.

 

He’d spent too many summers fishing, swimming, hiking, hunting to be expected to nest quietly like some sort of maternal swallow atop the crow's nest of a ship, always glimpsing the white-capped waves below but, required to remain tending young in a nest of twigs and fluff.

 

When his son was born he’s turned over a new leaf, he’d almost believed it himself, he was so adamant. He’d been filled with regret, remorse, good intentions and devotion. He had gumption after all, and he would channel it right here, as he built a cradle with his own hands he had recommitted mentally.

He could do this. He could stick. It could work.

 

He meant to do so, and for a minute it lasted, the sweet reverie of a home life he craved seeping into his veins till it burned with a saccharine syrup that made him sluggish, muted everything else, everything that made him, _him._ He saw it coming but, he was powerless to resist.

 

He would hurt them now maybe but, at least they’d see who he was and ultimately they’d be gladly free of him, as he was of them.

 

Sometimes he almost believed it, too.

 

When he’d left for good, so many times before unable to make the final, clean break it was for the best. Too much had happened, too many things left unsaid and she was as stubborn as he was, that’s what was good about them, that’s why they’d worked for so long.

 

His resolve never wavered, it had just been delayed and he thought to himself he deserved all the disappointment life handed him as it came.

 

_Han was loyal to himself._

 

************

 

He was smooth but, not unruffled, tart but, not overwhelming, some might say an acquired taste and he was fine with that, he always had been.

 

He could have any woman he set his heart on, any man too, for that matter and he had, he was powerful in ways he should not have been for a man so slight, so fair, so foreign but, somehow it set him apart in this city of angels, filled with bronzed, hardened bodies and desperate, smoke-fueled dye jobs, back-handed compliments and dim lighting. Someone like him needed an edge, a leg up and somehow he’d found one in icy hot ambition.

 

Without even trying he was building an empire, amassing wealth crazy fast, managing an army. He stomped down halls harder than he needed to, relishing others doing his bidding, hearing his name whispered in hushed tones, his smirk and side-eye powerful enough to silence a crowd, his swagger hard-earned, worn proudly, fisted tightly, a warrior of his own reputation and might.

 

If anyone had seen him they’d have thought him a power player and that’s just how he wanted it, right down to the perks that went with it. He got tables when he wanted them, heard people scramble for his attention, watched them claw their way into his sightline, felt them press in for his favor.

 

He was drunk on it, addicted to it, and would never get enough.

 

This was the thing he was living for and whoever said it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be clearly hadn’t had enough of the stuff.

 

_Hux was loyal to power._

 

**********

 

She was a nobody from nowhere when she’d lived in her car for 11 months, waiting tables and going to auditions, wearing a cardigan over her collared shirt, pulling the hem of her ratty denim skirt closer to her knees.

 

She was tired by 23, so worn out, so haggard and there was nothing to go back to anyway, no one she needed, no one she missed, no bridge she’d left unburned when she’d departed that small town, she’d been careful, she’d made certain and there was no going back anyhow. This was her one shot, her only way out, her big leap of faith and damn it, she was going to make it big if it killed her.

 

Whatever she needed to do, to be, to become, to accomplish, she was game, no matter what, this was it.

 

By the time she landed a role it was a whopper, a juicy, prime Porterhouse of a role, dripping with notoriety before she was cast and gleaming like a city on a hill as she approached, the answer to all her deepest-held, most secret fears about her value. If she could be cast as this character, with this face, with this body, if she was good enough to make it here there was a chance they’d all been wrong and she was different after all, she was special.

 

She’d been right.

 

She’d never know if she was nominated because the bosses had bought it for her, or if she’d swung through on a pendulum swinging her way but, no matter what, no one could take the pedestal she stood on from her now, no one could take her podium moment away again.

 

She’d had it, she’d have it again, she wouldn’t go without it for the rest of her life and as long as that was true, she was pleased.

 

_Jen was loyal to fame._

 

_*********_

 

She was curled up in the half-light just beside him, turned towards him so he could make out half her face and just one eye. She reached for him as he moved closer, wound her hands into his hair, her body curving to him, he cradled her face in his hands and listened closely, held her carefully as she spoke.

 

She was hurting, that was clear and it was unfair, no question about that. It would be dealt with, it was despicable, it was monstrous, it was heinous and yet what was most important was right here, in this bed, in this room, in this space.

 

Even in this half-light, on this evening, in this hotel he was her safety and she was his sanctuary and they were one another’s security in the tumbling current around them.

 

Whatever she needed, he wanted her to have it. If it was humanly possible, he would find it for her, get it quickly, make it happen.

 

If she was just a stranger, he wanted to meet her.

If she was just a friend, he wanted her laughter.

If she was just a companion, he wanted her heart.

 

There was no way he would ever be willing to lose it now that he had it, nothing he wouldn’t walk away from, nothing he wouldn’t hand off, part with if it kept her safe and offered him sanctuary.

Even in this half-light, this hotel room, this foreign city, even in these swift currents they were home.

 

He wiped the tear from her cheek, kissed her hair from her brow, assured her he’s on it. He starts the water in the jetted tub, lowers them both in, watches the bubbles surround them. There’s no way they can be drowned when they’re together, they can stay buoyant, they can stay afloat.

 

What’s between them isn’t dependent on location, not on where they land, not on light or dark.

What matters is that they found each other.

 

They’re home.

 

There’s no other way.

It’s settled.

 

He’d wondered all along where his own lies, now he knows.

Faced with the testing, he knows, he is certain.

 

_Ben was loyal to Rey._

 

_************_

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I've been waiting to give you the Anakin backstory, all old Hollywood, scandalous tragedy since the beginning.  
> FEELS SO GOOD to purge that.


	9. Lines

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by the faithful, flexible, fan-favorite @rileybabe  
> beta'd by the constant, capable, caring @uselessenglishmajor
> 
> new North Shore and True North next week: same bat place, same bat channel. 
> 
>  
> 
> xo

 

 

 

_“Lines are very difficult to learn.”_

\- Benedict Cumberbatch

  
  
  
  
  
  


*********

  
  


It had to be good.

Memorable.

Romantic.

 

Persuasive because most importantly, she had to say yes.

  


Lines from plays, from scripts, from productions.

Lines at meet and greets, on red carpets, at film festivals.

Lines of battle, of war, of boundaries drawn in the sand.

Lines of coke he’d snorted, costly and quickly inhaled.

Lines in his tattoo, the anchor, eagle and globe.

Lines at the bar, waiting for a drink.

Lines for coffee at AA.

Lines.

 

He knew them all.

This one had to top every line he’d ever stood in, ever crossed, ever spoken.

 

It had to be really good.

  


And, he needed a ring.

Yes.

You propose with a ring.

But, Rey wasn’t materialistic.

He saw how she reacted to that bracelet he got her, how much joy it brought her and how conflicted she immediately became as it flashed against her skin.

He needed to dazzle her without causing her to reject it.

 

Reject _him_.

 

He needed her to understand.

To hear him.

To consolidate how much he loved her into one little piece of sparkling jewelry.

  


She was getting a ring, yeah, but, he couldn’t convince her with jewelry.

He couldn’t sway his girl with flashiness.

That’s not who she was.

 

Not his Rey.

Not her.

She was so much more valuable than a diamond, it would only be a trinket compared to her, anyway.

 

It needed to be more than just a ring.

 

When she’d given _him_ a gift it was a key to her house. A part of herself.

 

That’s what she’d want.

He needed to tell her what’s in his head.

  


He needed to know what to say to her.

 

All he had to do was figure it out.

 

Maybe write it down.

Memorize it.

 

Like lines.

 

He needed to come up with some good, solid lines.

 

Lines.

  


Lines, he knew.

Lines, he could do.

  
  
  


*********

  


_“You want to dance?”_

 

Ben tapped her on the shoulder and froze as she turned, towering four inches above him in her puffed-sleeved, rainbow-sequined minidress.

She had shiny, hot pink lips and French braided hair and Ben had been dared, while he stood with the other middle school boys to approach her. Her name was Jessica St. James and she was the cutest girl in 7th grade at the Academy.

 

She eyed Ben and then nodded, following as he gulped hard and took the lead to the darkened dance floor, paper decorations fluttering from the ceiling.

 

Ben placed his palms on her hips gingerly, and felt hers settle on his shoulders.

They swayed to the song and he darted as fast as he could back to the bleachers while the other boys clapped him on the back, hooting about what a stud he was until he went to the bathroom, choosing a stall with a toilet instead of a urinal so he could sit down and catch his breath, pants till buttoned and all.

 

He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“you want to dance?”_

 

It was easy enough and it was over but, his palms would sweat for another twenty minutes at least, until he headed outside with the other kids to wait for their parents to pick them up.

  
  


*********

  
  


_“Can I come home?”_

 

Ben was sick to death of New York, he must have been to humble himself and ask his dad in this tone of voice if he could come back to California but, he hated how tight Manhattan felt, how his mom smelled after a night at the theater and how her maid spayed rose water on every thing in the house. His dad took a deep breath on the other end of the phone and Ben was silent as he waited.

 

He wasn’t sure how this would go.

On the one hand, he knew his dad wouldn’t want his mom left alone in New York but, on the other hand he knew all parents liked thinking they were the favorite and Ben was hoping this narcissism would get him a one-way ticket back to California.

What he needed was a little space, a little fresh air and freedom at 16-years-old, a break from taxis and rats and the assholes at the private school his mom made him attend.

 

His dad took the bait and Ben heard it in the way he inhaled, before he even answered, knew he’d be agreeable and it was as good as done.

 

He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“can I come home?”_

 

It was simple enough and in no time, Ben was packed up and heading back to the West Coast, sure he would finally have some room to grow into whatever he wanted, space to make his own decisions, figure things out for himself.

  
  


********

  


_“Yes, drill sergeant!”_

 

For thirteen weeks, it was the only thing Ben really needed to say, the only thing words his exhausted brain really needed to compute anyway and in about two weeks time he’d already said it so much it was basically muscle memory that kept it up. He barely thought about it as he let the words tumble out of his mouth in response to the brutal workouts and taunts and challenges he faced.

  


“IT IS NOT HARD, PRIVATE, YOU LAZY FUCKHEAD! IT’S NOT LIKE I’M ASKING YOU TO EAT A BUSHEL OF APPLES AND SHIT OUT A FRUIT SALAD! MOVE IT!”

There was only one response, no matter what the drill sergeant shouted at the recruits, no words required at all except the ones that were emblazoned on Ben’s mind already, a constant retort ready to fire off at any moment.  

 

For just over three months all he had to do was push, pull, climb, drop, squeeze, tug, lift, carry and run as hard as he could and in the meantime he could rest the parts of his brain that managed words and sentences because they were just not necessary.

  


He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“yes, drill sergeant!”_

  


It was succinct enough and all four syllables became second nature to him, installed permanently on his tongue so he didn’t even have to think about saying them, it just happened.

  


********

  


_“It’s a deal.”_

 

Ben had listened to Hux outline the contract the studio was offering and he decided he’d make this decision on his own, no need to ask his parents about it, he’s a grown man and this is his fucking business and he’ll decide for himself.

 

It was a good deal.

He was going to get to make one pretty awesome film and if Snoke liked it, maybe more after that. It was a sweet deal, considering how much the studio was fronting based only on his roles in some supporting films for another studio. Ben had a sneaking suspicion the deal had something to do with his parents’ clout and the weight their combined star power carried so all the more reason to leave them out of this.

 

He could handle himself, he decided, motioning for Hux to complete the deal with the studio, sure that he was doing what was in his own best interest and that’s what this was about anyway, right? He needed to make a life for himself. It was time to grow up, make something of his life. That’s what he was doing.

  


He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“it’s a deal.”_

  


It was quick enough and before he even officially signed his John Hancock, _Variety_ was spreading the news he was signed with the studio to make an action film as Kylo Ren of the _Knights of Ren_ book series in at least one motion picture.

  


*********

  


_“Fine.”_

 

Ben had nearly spit the words at Jen on the phone four days after he’d left her in Nice, sick of listening to her crying, tired of all the drama, ready to agree to just about anything to get her to shut the hell up already and if all she needed was a date to the awards ceremony Ben was willing to go. It was the Oscars after all, and it was just a formality to keep their breakup hush-hush at Snoke’s suggestion until the winners’ names were read aloud and all the statuettes handed out.

  


After this, she was out of his life for good. That was the arrangement, the negotiating was done and Ben would not be reneging on his end of the bargain. He’d go to the ceremony with her, play his role, wait in the wings as the dutiful boyfriend, smile and wave beside her and then it was over.

As over as humanly possible.

Over.

 

He’d made it this long, he could make it just a couple days more and Snoke was happy so there was no way this wasn’t a wise move for Ben’s career.

 

He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“fine.”_

  


It was impersonal enough and actually painless in the long run since Jen no more wanted to be with Ben than he with her, and he was relieved when he saw her pull away at a party after the ceremony to find her married, co-star lover.

  
  


*********

  


_“You’re fired.”_

  


Ben looked at Phasma and restrained himself from saying anything further, just letting those two words settle around them as he took in her pale, icy blue eyes, watched the emotions shift over her features like sand in a storm, watched confusion give way to shock, then horror and finally anger. He wasn’t going to let her have the joy of a throw down, the pleasure of indignation, the thrill of a fight.

She was done working for him and that was the bottom-most line, he was just getting there in a hurry.

 

Rey had told him what she’d heard, what she’d carried by herself and tried to spare him knowing, and there was no chance in hell he was waiting one more minute to fire Gwen Phasma. She was out. Hux would be pissed, maybe even dare to suggest Snoke might care and be displeased, not that Ben much cared what they personally thought anymore but, it mattered not one iota, she was fired.

 

He heard her start to argue but, Ben just marched away.

 

Her arguments, her suggestions, her pleas, and then her insults, her complaints, her threats rained around him and he had nothing to say as he left the room, moved down the hall  and pressed the elevator button, awaiting the silver doors to slide open and offer him a lift to their room where Rey waited.

  


He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

All he’d said was _“you’re fired.”_

 

It was clear enough and if he was going to bet money he’d have bet her guilty conscience was probably offering her plenty of reasons Ben didn’t even know as to why she should be fired. The only thing Ben needed to do was protect Rey, not worry about making sure Phasma understood much more than she did by receiving those two words from him.

  


***********

  
  


Lines, he could do.

Lines, he knew.

 

Lines.

 

He needed to come up with some good, solid lines.

  


Memorize it.

Maybe write it down.

  


All he had to do was figure it out.

 

He needed to know what to say to her.

 

That’s what she’d want.

He needed to tell her what’s in his head.

 

It had to be really good.

  


Persuasive because most importantly, she had to say yes.

  


Romantic.

Memorable.

 

It had to be good.

  


********


	10. Lead

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by my sweet sister @rileybabe
> 
> RIGHT SIDE from top to bottom:  
> Malaak (AKA: Mal)  
> Bryan  
> Markus  
> Dave
> 
> see you on The North Shore Chapter 17 next Monday, June 4  
> and for True North Chapter 11 next Tuesday, June 5
> 
> xo  
> Berry

 

 

 

_“Do not follow where the path may lead._

_Go instead where there is no path_

_and leave a trail.”_

\- Ralph Waldo Emerson

  
  


**********

 

He’d never learned to lead.

What for?

He’d never really _needed_ to learn how to lead.

 

Why?

Who would he lead?

 

He had no siblings, no cousins, no neighbors on a quaint, suburban cul-de-sac to shoot Nerf guns with or launch water balloons at. He had no lifelong friends, no hard-won allies, no wingmen, no comrades, no besties, no bros.

Ben had lived so many places, so many years he had just gone about his business a solitary figure, a lone wolf, a singular soul as long as he could remember and he’d never had much chance to navigate the landscape of friendship anymore than he learned the fine art of leadership.

 

When school government races were suggested, he shrugged.

When club officer nominations were collected, he sighed.

When commendations were handed out among his peers, he huffed.

 

He already had all the notoriety he could take, all the attention and focused appraisal and assessment anyone could have wanted from the moment of his birth to two famous actors. He’d been documented and trailed and photographed his whole life, in articles, in mentions, in interviews since before he could even talk.

 

Why would you ever willingly present yourself for further commentary, stand up and announce to the world your invitation for additional critiquing, he’d always wondered, why would you present yourself for examination by installing yourself as the figurehead of anything?

 

It was always beyond Ben’s understanding.

 

That was, until the pep squad at Orange Hills High School plastered the thickly-painted, textured hallways with posters against the centered, wide, horizontal, orange stripe announcing the school’s production of “Our Town”, a play by the Pulitzer-winning Thornton Wilder, and for the first time in his life, Ben Solo felt an odd churning in his soul - an ancient set of gears woke - a machine came to life.

 

Ben wanted a lead.

 

When opening night came and Ben was George Gibbs, the All-American loverboy, bad at Algebra and good at baseball who romances the ill-fated Emily in Grover’s Corners, he felt flush with the exhilaration of performance for the first time since playing a pine tree in the 3rd grade, his only other part with lines.

The acting bug had bitten him, just as they say, and planted a seed for the love of acting which he would always be susceptible to, and for a moment he had tasted what it was to lead - to carve the path and set off, and he was reborn.

 

If there had been anything else of interest to maintain his inspiration, any other production that sprung up after that, maybe he would have been able to chase that instinct from then on out.

Maybe he would have been able to eschew the allure of coke and speed that was already climbing vines around his ankles in high school.

Maybe he wouldn’t have drunk so much.

Maybe he would have sidestepped a whole slew of bad choices and fucked-up moments and a shit ton of other entanglements he was about to trudge through before climbing out the other side of the swamp of addiction.  

 

Maybe.

 

While acting as lead, he learned for the first time it wasn’t just about directing traffic or being utilized as a figurehead or even about demanding attention.

Leading, even in a play, was about being the most true, vulnerable version of yourself and following it to its full fruition.

 

He’d done it once and it felt fucking amazing.

It felt like having purpose and finding salvation.

 

Acting, from then on, whether as a high school senior or once he’d gotten back to it after the Marines, had been the only place he’d felt comfortable as lead. The only time he’d been surrounded by people willing to watch him do something he felt good at, strong and capable and nearly effortlessly successful at doing, and it was naturally the role he was given, almost every time, whether because of his pedigree, his height or his talent: the lead.

 

He would’ve done something else, played a supporting role, and he had, definitely, in the past.

He’d been the pine tree, after all, as well as the football player, the small-time accomplice, and the computer hacker but, casting directors and producers mostly saw him the way he saw himself, at least in this field, for better or worse now.

 

He was the lead.

 

Ben led.

  


“Hey, Solo, what the fuck, man? Drop the phone and order,” Dave shouted at him from across the table.

 

Ben looked up from the phone, still lit and aloft in his hand and cocked his head at Dave, giving a withering glare and a smirk before turning to smile at the server to his left, mercifully also a dude.

 

“Hey, sorry,” he said apologetically. “Can I have a water, a Cobb salad and a large chocolate shake, please?”

 

“Watching that girlish figure?” Markus teased him from his left elbow.

 

Ben snorted and looked back at his phone, momentarily ignoring his companions around the table to answer his text from his Aunt Amilyn. She’d texted that she’d acquired just what he’d asked her to handle in California and he was smiling a bit too brightly at the phone as he thanked her, told her he missed her, too and he’d be home in 2 weeks and hug her in person then.

 

“Talkin to the ol’ ball and chain, I take it?” Dave asked from across the table, taking a bite of his soft pretzel covered in plenty of dripping, heated cheese sauce. They were getting pretty good at ordering at this Toronto-based bar and grill, and so far the establishment had been good to them, too, even if they piled in late after shooting and made full use of the kitchen, ordering appetizers and entrees like it was going out of style.

 

“Nope,” Ben said with a grin as he slipped his phone into his back jeans pocket. “My godmother.”

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Bryan said, rolling his eyes, “a likely story.”

 

“I swear,” Ben said, popping a pretzel piece into his mouth and chomping proudly, a smile in his eyes. “Scout’s honor.”

 

“Uh huh. Well, you just remember we all saw the little lady you brought up here to shoot and we offered ourselves as alternatives if you fuck up, so, be afraid, man. Be very afraid,” Dave reminded him as he took a swig of beer, still teasing.

 

“Shut the fuck up, man,” Ben said, giving as good as he got. “She doesn’t want to date a boy after being with a man,” he replied, puffing his chest out antagonistically and smirking, leaning back to stretch his ample wingspan behind the chairs.

 

Each man at the table howled loudly at the pissing contest, enjoying the camaraderie of spending time blowing off steam among others who were also keeping long hours, a changing schedule and a demanding level of mental and physical stamina.

 

“Yeah, yeah,” Dave acquiesced, “we all know she’s got it bad for you, man. And you’re pussy whipped as hell, we know that, too,” he said around his beer bottle.

 

“Damn straight,” Ben nodded, grinning as he watched his fingers trace the condensation on his water glass. “Proudly.”

 

“Fuck, man,” Markus said, sighing deeply. “Wish I had a girl like that,” he admitted to the group. “Pretty little woman like that, who thinks the sun rises and sets in my shorts. Great body, great mind…”

 

“Alright, alright,” Ben warned, giving him a territorial look.

 

Markus held up his hands in submission. “I’m just saying, lemme know if your girl has any sisters, is all. We all know you’ve got that girl all wrapped up. Just tell the rest of us where you found her.”

 

Ben smiled again and exhaled, taking a sip of water. “Fellas, I don’t know what to tell you,” he said with a proud shrug. “I just tripped over her and lucked out. I take no credit.”

 

“Well, _fuck,_ ” Bryan remarked, “if only I’d known I just needed to be more of a klutz all along. I need to wear fuckin’ cheaper footwear and quit watching where I walk. Apparently, all you gotta do is slip on a banana peel or something and you end up with a girl like Ben’s.”

 

Everyone chuckled and Malaak, like a silently observant Dominic Purcell, arms crossed over his chest where he sat, snorted in the seat to Ben’s right, listening to the conversation amusedly as it went on around him, listening to the guys all tease one another.

 

“Nice to think about something besides where my paycheck is coming from,” Dave said, raising a beer bottle as a faux cheer. “Feels good to think about something else for a minute.”

 

Each man agreed as Ben listened and he let the last comment tumble around his mind while food was handed around the table, each man tucking into their food hungrily before Bryan piped up again.

 

“I haven’t had steady pay before this studio job since the Army, man,” Bryan said to no one in particular, knowing they each shared a similar story. “Feels good to work hard and make a decent wage again.”

 

“Yeah, but, it fucked me up,” Markus agreed. “Don’t know the pay was worth the fucking mental anguish, if you ask me.”

 

“I hear _that,_ ” Bryan agreed.

 

“I know I’m lucky just to be out alive, in one piece. I’m the bastard who drew a long straw while a lot of my brothers drew a short one. Always feels like there was no rhyme or reason to who got which,” Dave added.

 

Several voices murmured in agreement as the tone sobered and each of them remembered the face of someone who hadn’t come home. Marines, Navy Seals, Army Special Forces, Air Force  - they were all represented around the high top table and for a minute each former soldier wore the survivor’s remorseful look of apology, a permanent reminder of the uncertainty and unfairness of the circumstances by which they each ended up here, teasing one another over burgers and beers while so many of their brothers and sisters had been effected differently in the service of their country.

 

Everyone had a war story, a memory, a comment and they spent many evenings comparing experiences over a meal, giving Ben a circle of friends his own for the first time since he could remember.

 

 _Rey modeled this kind of friendship for me,_ Ben thought, smiling to himself as he looked secretly around the table and listened to the stories. _She taught me how to do this._ _God, I love that woman._

 

“So nice just not feeling so goddamn lost anymore,” Bryan remarked, swallowing a bite of steak. “I felt like I was wandering around clueless for so long after I got home from Korea, I was fuckin’ worthless. It’s just nice not to be like a useless bag of bones anymore,” he said. “Even if I gotta film _this_ guy all the time now,” he smirked at Ben as he joked.

 

“Yeah, this job saved _my_ sweet, little ass, that’s for sure,” Dave agreed. “I thought my mom was gonna have me committed if I didn’t shave and get out of the house and make some money.”

 

“I’ve seen your ass,” Markus said. “Trust me. Nothing little _or_ sweet about it,” he snorted.

 

Dave stood up and shook his hips at the table of men while they all shouted at him to _sit down, sit the fuck down,_ _nobody wants to see that, put it away, Cordero, put it away_.

 

“Well anyway, here’s to you, Solo,” Bryan said, raising a bottle to Ben, causing everyone else to raise their drinks in solidarity, a half-drunken toast to him in their midst. “Thanks for getting us all set up and hired on over and over,” he said. “You’ve done good by all of us. I’m thankful. We all are.”

 

Ben smiled and looked down, embarrassed while they each agreed and simulated the traditional glass-clinking that normally followed a toast, settling for a more casual approach among men.

 

“C’mon,” he said, trying to escape the discomfort of being thanked. “Enough, cut it out,” he chided them.

 

“Naw, naw, I’m serious,” Bryan said, while Mal, Dave and Markus nodded their heads vehemently. “Thank you, man. I mean it.”

 

“You guys deserve these jobs,” Ben stated, “and the studio is lucky to have you all.”

 

“Alright, let’s change the subject before somebody gets their period,” Dave said, elbowing Bryan hard in the ribs, making him choke on his drink, beginning a short-lived shoving match around their end of the table.

 

“All I’m saying is this, man,” Bryan said, wrapping up the conversation, “you lead the way, Solo, and I’m right behind you, big guy. That’s all I’m saying.”

 

Ben felt his heart twist with a shock of pride and affection as he grasped the words, zeroing in on one word in particular.

 

“Yeah, man,” Markus agreed. “Where you lead, I will follow,” he said, leaving Dave to break into Carole King’s _“Where You Lead I Will Follow”_ for a few notes, before everyone groaned and Mal jumped up and went to pop money into the juke box in the corner, hoping to alleviate them all of Dave’s singing in favor of some real music.

 

Maybe there was more than one thing Ben could lead in, after all.

Maybe.

Just maybe there was more than one way he was comfortably seen as a leader and naturally fall into step in the role.

 

Maybe he already had.

 

***********

 

 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> moodboard by my sweet sister @rileybabe
> 
> RIGHT SIDE from top to bottom:  
> Malaak (AKA: Mal)  
> Bryan  
> Markus  
> Dave


	11. Lines, Part 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> it took almost a month to capture Ben's voice again. Hopefully, I can bang out the completion of the North Star fics within the month and put this two-headed creature to bed contentedly. 
> 
> thank you to my darling sister, @rileybabe who not only made this lovely art but who more importantly, daily walks the fine line between "hey sister, any True North chapter for me?" and "take your time, we will be here when you are ready, give yourself grace" so beautifully, I wish you each could know how much more valuable she is as a friend and partner than I can express. 
> 
> Your patience as readers is beyond precious and your readership and support of this fic, as well as North Shore brings me to tears with love and thanksgiving. 
> 
> xo  
> Berry

 

 

 

_“One line that works_

_is better than twenty lines of dialogue.”_

\- John Wayne

  
  
  


*********

 

_“It’s a deal.”_

 

He’d only needed one line and he’d used it.  

 

All he’d said was “it’s a deal.”

 

Ben picked up the blue pen,  blue because that’s what a contract requires and a pen because this was permanent, no changing his mind now, and he signed his name on the prepared line.

Hux picked up the paper and grinned a tight-lipped smile at it, tucking it into a manilla envelope and threw the whole thing in his bag, slinging it over his shoulder before heading for the door to Ben’s apartment.

 

“I’ll give this to Snoke and we’re in business,” he said. “Congratulations to us both,” self-congratulatory to the end, waves of pride at his negotiating skills, his business prowess floating off him like too much aftershave.

 

That lucrative arrangement had stuck until the DUI.

After that, the only line Ben had needed was a single word: _“okay.”_

 

Okay, he’d re-sign.

Okay, he’d do an additional 5 pictures instead of the remaining 3 left in his contract with Snoke.

Okay, he’d continue the contracts current among his team until the studio requirements were fulfilled.

 

So maybe Snoke owned him a little deeper and a little longer now but, there was no other choice, not really.

 

Just one line.  

And it changed everything.

  


**********

 

_“Please marry me.”_

  


He’d had so many lines planned.

 

A whole slew of them, a pretty good little speech if he did say so himself.

 

Ben had never been sure how he would propose until he met Rey but, as soon as he knew, after the elevator and the DUI and the Christmas, he’d decided easily he was definitely proposing and it would be fantastic.

He had it all planned.

He’d rent the small theater in town that showed old noir films for a weeknight as soon as Rey came to visit. He’d pay them to play the Marx Brothers movie “A Night at the Opera," the film Rey recommended when he first laid eyes on her at The Resistance.

He’d buy her popcorn and they’d have the whole theater to themselves to watch the movie and laugh and when the lights came up at the end he’d drop to one knee.

 

“You're everything beautiful and happy and good in my world. You're my whole source of light, Rey. Will you marry me?"

He would be on one knee, holding up a ring and he prayed to every god in heaven he’d heard of, she’d say yes without a hint of hesitation.

 

Instead, he'd knelt beside her, a soft, sleepy vision of his future wife there in his bed where she belonged and he couldn't wait another minute to get that ring on her hand.

 

Whatever he said, her answer was what mattered.

Wherever it happened, her answer was the thing he cared about.

However it went down, her answer would dictate the rest of Ben’s life.

 

“Yes!” She’d shouted it and it struck like a tuning fork, reverberating hard in his brain until it whited out anything else with completion.

  


Just one line.

And it changed everything.

  
  
  


**********

  


_“I’m wondering if you want it to be ours…I thought maybe you might like this?”_

_I wanted you to see this view, first. The mountains, the ocean. I thought…_

_I just couldn’t wait another minute to share it all with you…_

_I just want to make you happy. I love you, baby.”_

 

He’d needed _more_ than one line.

 

Far more.

 

Ben had planned and schemed and researched every second he had to spare in Toronto from the moment Rey boarded the plane to Tennessee until the moment Aunt Ami texted the night he arrived back in California telling him the showing of the house was all lined up.

 

Every spare scrap of time, every night at the hotel propped up on a single side of the bed alone, his body leaving space for Rey instinctively, he’d poured over the real estate apps on his phone like a professional, researching land values, crime rates, driving times and school zones of available properties.

It was important he could see the water, and important Rey could see the mountains and when he’d spotted the house for sale in the Pacific Palisades he had sent it to Ami immediately, asking her to take a walk through it and send him some videos.

 

He’d sat smiling, Mal peering at the phone beside him nodding approvingly as Aunt Ami slowly made her way through the rooms and once she hit the backyard, the deck settled in the arms of deep, green mountains overlooking the wide blue Pacific, Ben told her to book a showing and let the owner know he was very interested and heading home soon.

 

He just needed Rey to see it.

He just needed to make sure she would be okay with this.

He just needed to give her something to show her he wanted her would give her anything, do anything to be together.

 

He just needed her to like it and it was as good as done.

 

“Let’s go see the inside of our house,” she’d said, taking his hand, changing his life, giving him a home.

 

Just one line.

And it changed everything.

 

******

  


_“Is this…_

_Is this yours? Is this ours…_

_Are we…are you….are we…”_

  


If he’d had a line, that would have been a great time to use it.

 

Stuttering, stumbling over his words like that, incredulity leaving him blinking down at Rey in the dying evening sunlight wide-eyed and gaping, his jaw hanging open like a wide-mouth bass, Ben could certainly have used a line.

 

The yellow and pink clouds painted the California water below in pastel watercolors while the sun raced into the Pacific, shadows and light dancing across Rey’s face as she grinned proudly up at him, glowing with sunset rays and secret pride, the white stick in her hand held aloft like a kite string, pulling their baby down from the clouds above.

He was shocked, he was unprepared, he was unsuspecting and he’d never been so elated by news in his entire life.

 

It had been a rollercoaster day.

 

A day spent with his girl was never wholly bad but, Snoke had whooped his ass right in front of Rey and he was still smarting.

Adding insult to injury, he’d humbled himself and agreed to allow his mother to assist with the Snoke clusterfuck, well aware he was in over his head and he was only partly mollified by the pleasure of watching his bride and his mother sitting together, having girl time.

Giving Rey a mother and Leia a daughter was a gratifying thing and it alleviated some of the sting of Snoke’s visit.

 

The joy of hearing Rey defend him and threaten Snoke with an ass kicking thrilled him to his core, unused to being preferred and treasured.

 

This day had been a ferris wheel of emotions and circumstances, up and down and round again until all he could think about was centering himself, getting some fresh air with Rey and introducing her to the Pacific.

 

Feeling the sand under their soles.

Feeling the seabreeze.

Feeling peace.

 

She held up her hand and her ring sparkled in the half light - his North Star, his true North shimmering right there on her left hand where it belonged, his home base, his first love, plotting a course to the only thing that mattered, his whole world.

 

Inside her hand, a little, white stick with the promise of a new day.

 

Just one extra line.

And it changed everything.

 

**********

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I always intended this chapter to be titled "Lines, Part 2" for this reason and I am so relieved it's finally written! Whew!


End file.
